The Hilton Head Christian Academy girls basketball team endured a tough challenge from rival John Paul the 2nd in the SCISA 3A championship game before pulling away in the fourth quarter for a 68-44 win and their sixth consecutive state title Saturday night before a packed house in The Cove at USCB.
Star guards Mya Hutchinson and Devon Yarde took over in the fourth quarter, and Morgan Scott was dominant in the paint as the trio of senior standouts propelled the Eagles to yet another state championship, furthering a legacy that began well before they suited up at HHCA. Amazing run.
The Hilton Head Prep boys still have a long way to go to catch the Eagles and their six-pack of consecutive titles, but the Dolphins made it back-to-back SCISA 3A boys crowns with a 35-15 win over Christian Academy of Myrtle Beach on Saturday in Sumter, and Prep did it with a dominant defensive effort in the second half.
The Dolphins clamped down and shut out the Saints for the final 14 minutes, closing the game on a 22-0 run and milking the clock with their finely-tuned Princeton offense to hang another banner in Sea Pines.
The Cross Schools Stingrays claimed the SCISA 1A girls title with a 47-43 win over Curtis Baptist, capping off the school’s first season of varsity basketball with a state championship.
The Stingrays found themselves trailing by seven in the second half before freshman guard P.J. Benson took over in the fourth quarter, scoring 11 points in the period.
Another spectacular season ended in the Class 2A Lower State finals for the Hampton County Hurricanes, whose boys hoops team met the same fate as the football team, falling to powerhouse Oceanside Collegiate 62-46 to snap a 15-game win streak and end their season one win short of the state championship game.
The USCB Sand Sharks wrapped up their first season in The Cove on Saturday with home games against the Flagler Saints, looking to earn some revenge for a pair of losses down in St. Augustine last month.
The Sand Shark women continued their recent surge, escaping with a 58-56 win despite losing leading scorer Janiyah Heyward to injury in the first quarter, as Mahkayla Premo drew a foul with six-tenths of a second left and knocked down two free throws to nail down a fourth consecutive win and keep alive their hopes of making the eight-team Peach Belt Conference tournament.
It was another tough loss for the Sand Shark men, who cut a 10-point deficit with less than seven minutes left down to three and had a shot to tie it at the end of regulation but couldn’t get a clean shot off at the buzzer, falling 72-69.
We also had 13 high school wrestlers from the Lowco bring home hardware from the SCHSL state championships in Anderson, where a trio of Lowco grinders claimed state titles. Battery Creek’s Gunnar DeGroat won his second straight state title with the 175-pound crown in Class 3A, while Bluffton’s Jada Lawrence made it two consecutive titles with gold in the 145-pound weight class, and May River freshman Houston Rudisill took the title at 138 pounds in Class 4A, setting himself up to become the area’s first four-time state champ – stay tuned for the next three years.
We had all three champs on with us live last night on the Lowco Grind presented by Reverence Wrestling Club, where we also shouted out the rest of the medalists, including runners-up Elmer Linares and Le’Roy Tyus from Battery Creek, third-place finishers Bryce Stephenson from Hilton Head High, Andrew Legree from Battery Creek, and Jeremiah Chavez from Bridges Prep, and fourth-place winners Vivian Urriola and Dillon Seman of May River, Antonio McKnight from Beaufort High, Ali Jenkins from Bridges Prep, and Stephan LaPresta from Colleton County.
And the action is heating up on the diamonds, where it was a tough-luck weekend for the USCB Sand Sharks. The baseball team dropped three two-run games to visiting Shepherd (W.Va.), and the softball team went 0-3 at top-ranked North Georgia, dropping the last one in a heartbreaker, 4-3 with the tying run cut down at the plate.
Hilton Head Christian Academy baseball started the season with two big wins over Georgia foes, while the Bluffton Bobcats split a pair to open the Woodland Preseason Tournament and Holy Trinity and Hilton Head Prep both picked up wins over St. Andrew’s.
Justin Jarrett, Lowco Sports
Last Night in the LowCo
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February 2024
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