Second-ranked McEachern outscored No. 10 Norcross 16-3 in the first six minutes of their Class 7A boys basketball quarterfinal Wednesday night and maintained a lead of anywhere from nine to 17 points through the first minute of the fourth quarter.
Things got tight at that point, but foul-plagued forward Ace Bailey stepped up to restore order, scoring 15 of his game-high 33 points in the final 5:54 to lead McEachern to a 72-57 victory in Powder Springs.
The victory put the Indians (25-5) in the semifinals for the fifth time in eight seasons and two wins away from their first state championship since 2019. McEachern will face fellow Cobb County school Wheeler at 3 p.m. Saturday at Georgia State. Wheeler advanced with a 62-57 victory over Campbell in an all-Cobb quarterfinal. A fourth school from the county, Pebblebrook, lost to Milton in another quarterfinal.
“We get a little offended sometimes when they go to the Gwinnett side and say that Gwinnett has better basketball,” McEachern coach Tremayne Anchrum said. “We’ve got great basketball over here, between Kell and Walton and Wheeler and all these teams that we’ve got on our side. We’ve got a great thing going on. Cobb has a lot of basketball talent.”
Bailey, a Rutgers signee who’s ranked the No. 2 senior nationally in the 247Sports Composite, went to the bench after picking up his third foul with 4:52 remaining in the second quarter and his team holding a 25-12 lead. The Indians weathered that storm, in fact adding to the lead with Bailey on the bench to make it 34-18 at halftime.
Bailey was called for his fourth foul and went back to the bench with 2:20 left in the third quarter, seconds after making a jump shot to put the Indians ahead 48-33.
Norcross (17-14) quickly got back into it with a 17-7 run over the next four minutes, cutting the lead to 55-50 on a jumper by Toby Ojukwu with 6:11 remaining. Ojukwu scored the final seven points of the run.
Bailey, who had returned to the game just seconds earlier, took over from there. He converted three-point plays on the next two McEachern possessions to push the lead back to nine points and then made four of six free throws and hit a 3-pointer in the final four minutes to put the game away.
“When our big fella goes down, we kept the game even, which was all I was looking for,” Anchrum said. “And when he goes back in, we did what we were supposed to do.”
Jaye Nash scored 14 points for McEachern, and Jayden Bynes had 11, including eight in the first half. Isaiah Dulaney opened the scoring with a 3-pointer, giving the Indians a lead they never relinquished, and finished with nine points.
Norcross sophomore Jaron Saulsberry scored 17 of his team-high 21 points in the second half. Ojukwu scored 19.
“We had to play hard today,” Anchrum said. “I mean, [Norcross] is a tough team. That’s a multiple state championship coach. We knew they were going to fight back. We knew it wasn’t going to be a 20-point game all game.”
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