Balanced offense earns Milton a spot in the 5A girls state title game
ATLANTA — The Milton Eagles did something that no other team has done since December — find a way to beat the Coffee Trojans.
No. 3-ranked Milton punched its ticket to the GHSA Class 5A girls title game by stopping Coffee 59-48 in Friday’s first semifinal matchup at the Georgia State University Convocation Center. The loss snapped the Trojans’ 25-game winning streak that dated back to Dec. 13.
The Eagles (27-4) will now face the winner of Friday’s nightcap between No. 1 River Ridge and No. 4 Creekview in Macon next week in the Class 5A championship.
Milton had as much as a 15-point lead in the second half but had to withstand a furious fourth-quarter rally by Coffee, who sliced the lead down to as little as two points with 2:55 left to play. However, the Eagles never lost the lead.
Coffee ends its season at 28-3.
Eagles head coach Triston Cooper said he was proud of the composure his team showed, especially when Milton’s comfortable double-digit lead was trimmed down to just one possession.
“I just told our team that I was so proud of them. We’ve been a resilient group from day one, and from the jump, they have been coachable and they have bought it to what our staff has been preaching to them,” Cooper said. “Our word for the year has been ‘mudita’, which is finding joy in the success of others, and our team has done that. They just responded perfectly tonight… any time Coffee made a run, we just fought right back.”
“The future of this program is bright, but the future is also now, because we’ve got an opportunity now to go play for a state title,” Cooper added. “We’ve got a lot of young kids, and I’m proud of how they’ve responded this year. One thing I’ve learned about our team is that we’ve got some gamers. In the big moments, it doesn’t scare them, and that makes them fun to coach.”
Coffee head coach Tasha Kellogg said her team just made too many mistakes against a good team like Milton to earn a win.
“We told our team in the locker room just now that they have changed the culture of Coffee basketball,” Kellogg said. “They’ve grown a lot over the last four years. They’ve learned how to win and play hard on every single possession. But we didn’t play our best basketball today… we didn’t rebound well or make the easy baskets when we needed to. Basketball is a game of runs, and Milton just had a lot more runs than we did. But our kids kept fighting until that clock hit zeros.”
Milton led 11-6 after the first quarter and extended the lead to double digits on a jumper by Grace Musselman midway through the second. The Eagles stretched the lead to 26-14 by halftime, and the margin grew to 38-23 when Deyva Davis drove for a layup to cap a 10-2 run late in the third period.
However, Coffee clawed back with a 16-4 fourth-quarter run that eventually narrowed the gap down to just two, 46-44, on a runner by Jasmine Porter with 2:55 to play.
But Milton survived the surge, and a huge 3-pointer by Musselman with under a minute remaining turned a five-point lead into an eight-point margin, and the Eagles held on from there.
Milton had an incredibly balanced offensive attack, with four players scoring 13 points each — Musselman, Caroline Young, Tamia Tomlinson and Brooklyn Brunetti.
Porter led Coffee with 27 points.
