MACON -- Eagle’s Landing stayed with Columbia for a quarter and 17 seconds.
Then Columbia simply started to take the ball away.
No. 1-ranked Columbia (29-3) took advantage of eight second-quarter turnovers, held Eagle’s Landing (26-5) without a field goal for a five-minute stretch and sprinted to a big lead on the way to a 72-47 win in the Class AAA semifinals Friday at the Macon Centreplex.
Columbia earned a chance to win back-to-back state titles.
“We just had to get used to the atmosphere,” said sophomore guard Tahj Shamsid-Deen, who scored 17 points for Columbia. “Because we have some new guys, and they’ve never been in this kind of atmosphere before.”
Once Columbia adjusted, the atmosphere seemed suffocating for Eagle’s Landing, which led just once, that at 6-4 midway through the first quarter.
“Columbia was very good,” said Eagle’s Landing coach Clay Crump. “They outexecuted us, and we just had a hard time scoring.”
Junior post player Jhaustin Thomas scored 18 points for Columbia, which also got 15 from Algie Key.
“Any time you’ve got that big of a gap ... that hurts us,” McCrary said. “We go through some players, and if you’re off a day and come back and play the second game, you can kind of keep that intensity. With that long week, it kind of took a little bit out of us. ”
Despite the chance at a repeat championship, playing with championship hopes on the line in a big arena was new for Key, who transferred to Columbia from Lakeside for his senior year.
“I’ve never been this far before. I never made it past the first round at my old school,” Key said. “Being here is a great experience.”
It was the 12th consecutive win for Columbia. Eagle’s Landing, which had never won a state playoff game before this year, ended a 10-game winning streak.
Columbia, which beat LaGrange for the AAA title last year, enters the state final undefeated against teams in Class AAA, its only losses against AAAA schools Tucker and Miller Grove and Humble Christian from Texas.
After a sloppy first quarter that featured three ties and a pair of lead changes, Columbia took control in the second period. The Eagles led 13-11 after a 3-pointer by Eagle’s Landing’s Eric Wortham 17 seconds into the second period.
The next Eagle’s Landing points came at the 2:15 mark on another 3-point shot by Wortham. By then Columbia’s Shamsid-Deen and Stephon Allen had scored two buckets each to spark a 16-0 run.
Wortham and Desmond Ringer scored 11 points each for Eagle’s Landing.
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