The Westlake girls earned the right to defend their Class AAAAAAA championship and will meet Collins Hill for the title on March 9 at 7 p.m. at the Macon Coliseum.
The No. 1-ranked McEachern boys will play defending state champion Meadowcreek for the championship at 7 p.m.
Boys
McEachern 66, Norcross 62
McEachern’s Sharife Cooper said his team has been eagerly looking forward to a rematch with Norcross since the playoff brackets were revealed three weeks ago. The Indians wanted a chance to erase that bad feeling that still lingered from last year’s 20-point loss to the Blue Devils in the quarterfinals of the state playoffs.
But at halftime, with Norcross holding a 24-21 lead and Cooper having scored only four points, he decided it was time to act. The junior guard scored 22 points in the second half and his 26-point effort helped lead the No. 1-ranked Indians to a 66-62 overtime win against No. 4 Norcross at the Buford City Arena.
“Knowing what happened last year, we try to take one game at a time,” Cooper said. “But realistically, we’ve been waiting to play them all season. Luckily we got through it.”
McEachern (31-0) also got 18 points from Isaac Okoro, who made four free throws in overtime to put the Indians ahead to stay. Jared jones scored nine, all of 3-pointers, and Alyn Breed scored eight.
McEachern coach Mike Thompson challenged his team – particularly Cooper and Okoro – to step up their game in the second half.
“We talked at halftime, Sharife and Isaac are big-time players and if you’re a star, you’ve got to give a star effort. We walked about that and they responded.”
Norcross (22-9) got 24 points from Southern Cal signee Kyle Sturdivant, who scored only two in the first half. The Blue Devils also had 11 points from Issa Muhammad and nine each from Brandon Boston and Caleb Murphy, who hit a 3-pointer with 7.1 seconds left in regulation to tie the game 57-57.
Meadowcreek 73, Tift County 36
The defending state champions stormed from the gate to take an 11-0 lead, led 24-5 after the first quarter and extended it to 43-15 at halftime. Much of the damage came from the perimeter, with the Mustangs knocking down seven 3-pointers in the first half – four from Jalen Benjamin and three from Jamir Chaplin.
By the end of the third period the lead had stretched to 60-27, meaning the final quarter was trimmed to six minutes.
“We watched the film (of Tift’s quarterfinal game) and we saw they got up on Discovery and kind of slowed the tempo down,” Meadowcreek coach Curtis Gilleylen said. “We didn’t want to get in that position. So we said, even more so than Pebblebrook (Meadowcreek’s third-round opponent) we had to come out firing from the get-go and they came out and they did it.”
No. 2-ranked Meadowcreek (26-5) was led by Benjamin, a UAB signee, with 21 points and Chaplin with 20. The Mustangs also got 11 points from Damian Dean. Unranked Tift County (21-9) was led by guard Tyree Marshall with 17 points.
“We’re just trying to play together and do what we do,” Benjamin said. “That mean’s playing defense. That’s what we focus on.”
Gilleylen said he called Chaplin, Benjamin and Dean into his office a week ago and stressed the importance of their senior leadership down the stretch.
“Since then you could see the look in their eyes,” Gilleylen said. “They went to another level. They’re locked in and going to another level. It’s different than how it’s been all year. You can see it.”
Girls
Westlake 48, North Forsyth 26
Defending state champion Westlake had no trouble with North Forsyth, limiting the Raiders to a single field goal in each of the first two quarters to take a 21-5 halftime lead. North Forsyth tried to stay in the game by shooting 3-pointers, but Westlake dominated the glass and restricted the Raiders to only one shot on most trips down the court.
Westlake (29-0) is very young. The Lions have only one senior on the team, but the contributors are all juniors and sophomores. They have survived against an extremely aggressive schedule.
“We are blessed to be here again,” Westlake coach Hilda Hankerson said. “This is the team that scrimmaged against those seniors last year when they were underclassmen. Their practice against those seniors was – no offense – better than anybody else in the state. It was great competition. … But because they’re so young, we weren’t sure how much they could learn and how quickly they could turn the corner.”
The Lions were led by sophomore Brianna Turner with 16 points. Sophomore Raven Johnson and junior Lydia Freeman each scored nine.
North Forsyth (26-5) was led by Caroline Martin, who scored 10 points.
It’s the second straight year Westlake had eliminated North Forsyth in the semifinals. The Lions prevailed 52-44 in 2018.
Collins Hill 58, Cherokee 48
No. 2 Collins Hills squandered a big lead, but produced a big finish and earned its first trip to the championship game since 2007.
The Eagles (30-1) grabbed an early 10-1 lead, but watched Cherokee peck away until the Warriors took a 31-30 lead on a bucket by Ashlyn Andrus with 3:10 remaining in the third quarter. From that point Collins Hills regained control and outscored Cherokee 28-17 the rest of the way.
“I’ve told them all year long that they’ve got something that’s hard to come by and that’s fortitude,” Collins Hill coach Brian Harmon said. “They always seem to find a way to make the play they need.”
Collins Hill got 22 points from Purdue signee Bria Harmon, 20 points from Jordan Releford and 13 from Javyn Nicholson. Harmon called his Harmon and Harris “two of the best guards in the state.” Releford has bounced back nicely after missing 13 games earlier this season with a bruised sternum.
Cherokee (27-4) was led by Chatham Brown with 10 points, Lacie McCoy with nine, and Andrus with eight.
