JACKSON — All Tydajasha Hood could do was watch.
As she tripped and fell slowly to the floor at midcourt of the Mississippi Coliseum, the West Lowndes junior had no power to stop Pine Grove’s Ellie Fryar as Fryar seized the loose ball and dribbled up the court.
With no one in front of her, Fryar ran away with an uncontested layup, and Pine Grove (27-8) had run away with Monday’s Class 1A semifinal, handing West Lowndes its first — and only — loss of the season, 55-26.
The Panthers took a 25-0 record into the game and finished a stellar year with a record of 25-1, coming two wins short of a second state championship in school history.
“I thought it was a great season,” West Lowndes coach Takeea Bozeman said. “The best we’ve ever had.”
The school won its only title in girls basketball in the 2003-04 school year, but Bozeman said this season was the closest the Panthers have come to an unbeaten record. Monday’s loss, then, stings even more.
“It’s tough to go this far and be undefeated and lose right before the final,” Bozeman said.
West Lowndes was flummoxed from the start by Pine Grove, which has claimed the past three Class 1A titles and could win a fourth Thursday in Oxford. The two teams of Panthers fought to a 7-7 draw through six minutes of the first quarter, but Pine Grove hit a 3 to take the lead and never gave it up.
“I think our nerves got the best of us at the beginning,” Bozeman said. “They’ve been here before, so they were a little more comfortable than we were.”
Pine Grove stretched its lead to 14-7 at the end of the first quarter, led by as many as 10 points in the second and went into the half ahead 25-16.
“It was very important just to get that lead knowing that, ‘Hey, if we get this lead, they’re eventually gonna lay down, and if we keep getting that lead, they’re eventually gonna lay down more and more and more, and that’s when we hit ’em hard and get our points and get up,'” said Pine Grove senior Loren Elliott, who led her team with 13 points and 11 rebounds.
Elliott pointed to her team’s difficult schedule — the Panthers played quarterfinalists Hickory Flat and Ingomar as well as Thursday’s championship opponent, Baldwyn, in the regular season — as a reason for the confidence that showed in Pine Grove throughout Monday’s game.
“We knew that they were undefeated, but we knew that they also haven’t played a schedule like we have,” Elliott said. “We knew that that schedule has prepared us for this team today, and we knew that we could just come in confident and knew that we could do it.”
Pine Grove’s switches on offense and its smothering defense led to frustration for West Lowndes, senior guard Marvaysha Seals said. Seals had 10 points on 4-of-9 shooting, but her teammates combined to make just 5 of 21 shots from the field.
West Lowndes also went 6 for 21 at the free throw line, a dismal performance that wouldn’t have made a difference in and of itself but certainly hurt. A decent showing at the line for the Panthers “would have given them a little more confidence,” Bozeman said.
Though the game got away from West Lowndes in the second half — Pine Grove increased its lead to 40-22 at the end of the third and held West Lowndes to just four points in the fourth — Bozeman kept up hope of a comeback.
“I didn’t want them to stop playing, so I kept my starters in until the very last minute,” she said. “I really wanted them to fight through it and just show a spark.”
But the spark never came — if it did, Pine Grove quickly snuffed it out before it could take light. The Panthers, whose seniors hope to go 4 for 4 in state championship wins, will play Baldwyn at 1 p.m. Thursday in Oxford.
“There’s no other way I want to go out,” Elliott said. “Just making it to the championship game is my goal, and now we’re just prepared to go in and win.”
West Lowndes, too, had dreams of getting to that point, but now the Panthers must regroup and prepare for next season. The team will Seals, Ashanti Williams, Takara Givens and Lauren Bell to graduation, but a core group including Hood, Nenah Young, Averi Sanders and Quankeria Halbert will return.
The loss “just means that we’ll go back in the gym with a lot of work to do,” Bozeman said. “It means that they know me, I know them, and we can just build off of what we’ve been doing.”
Other scores
Class 1A girls: Baldwyn 48, Sacred Heart 27
Class 1A boys: Baldwyn 61, West Tallahatchie 55
Class 1A boys: Ingomar 64, Shaw 56
Class 4A girls: Ripley 49, Raymond 33
Class 4A girls: Moss Point 42, Pontotoc 39
Class 4A boys: Greenwood 66, Florence 44
Class 4A boys: Raymond 63, Ripley 46
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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