ITTA BENA — Those who were looking for an offensive shootout on the campus Mississippi Valley State on Friday night got the furthest thing from it in the nightcap between Starkville and Germantown.
Both teams were gunning for a spot in the Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 7A state semifinals, but a 28-28 score at the end of regulation showcased a struggle to win.
It came down to overtime, one that saw a large disparity in fouls between the Yellow Jackets and Mavericks, heavily favoring Germantown.
What did make the difference in the end is that the Mavs made shots when it counted while the Jackets went ice cold, eventually falling, 37-30, in overtime.
“We rushed a few shots, let them speed us up a little bit,” Starkville head coach Woodie Howard said. “I think we let the officiating get to us. Us not getting calls in certain areas, it messed with their heads, so we stopped driving as much or we went in seeking the foul instead of trying to score.”
For a good portion of Friday night’s quarterfinal contest, Starkville (18-12) held a sizable lead, including into the fourth quarter.
The lead reached as many as six points, which, in a low-scoring affair like what unraveled in Itta Bena, was a lot.
“It was a tough game,” junior guard Jaden Tate said. “We came out and played hard in the beginning like we talked about. We always talk about executing in all four quarters, and today, we didn’t execute all four quarters and we came up on the short end of the stick.”
Along with that, the play of Germantown sophomore center Sam Funches was massive, finishing with 20-plus-points with an unrelenting presence in the paint that Starkville couldn’t handle on either side of the ball.
Fouls certainly weren’t in Starkville’s favor down the stretch, but scoring just five points over the final 12 minutes of play and getting out-scored 16-5 during that stretch was the biggest story of a disappointing night for the Jackets.
“In the fourth, I felt like we kind of laid down.” Tate said. “We were up. It felt like we had the game. We started missing some rotations and slowly let them back into the game.”
That let down led to an unfortunate end for the second-straight season in the same place for Starkville, mere minutes away from a chance to get to the Big House in Jackson and potentially advance to a state championship.
Last season had a brutal ending with a stacked senior class unable to bring home hardware, but this season, there’s more hope going into the next, with a young roster mostly returning that is hungry to finish the job.
“We’re going to take this, keep building on it, and come back next year,” Howard said. “Hopefully, we’ll be bigger and better.”
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