For the second time in three seasons, coach Mitchell McCurry had his Louisville Lady Wildcat basketball team back in the Big House at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson.
After winning the Class 4A state championship two seasons ago, LHS had a Quarterfinal exit against the eventual state champs of Tishomingo County. This season, the coach got his team past that round and into the semifinals to take on last year’s 3A runners up in Morton.
LHS built a 10-point lead in the first quarter but saw it slip away as the Lady Panthers managed to come from behind and take a 46-41 victory.
“I thought they competed really hard,” McCurry said of his team. “They went out and left everything on the court. We had some nerves late in the game and unraveled. I think some of my players that had played in the state championship game came out and had that experience and played well. We had to play into the bench and some of those kids were really nervous and you could see it in their eyes.”
LHS jumped out to a 15-5 lead in the first quarter but Morton would recover. As an experienced team at the Big House from just a year prior, the Lady Panthers would lean on that to withstand the early run and then push forward against the Lady Cats.
Morton cut the lead to 22-16 at the break. Things got even tighter in the third quarter as Morton would close it to 31-30 and it was game on from there. A strong push in the final 8 minutes did LHS in as Morton outscored the Lady Cats 17-10 to get the lead and keep it.
The depth of the Lady Panthers would shine as they had 19 points off the bench to LHS’ two.
Makayla Sam finished the game with a game-high 17 points as she shot 7-of-18 from the field with eight rebounds and three steals. The Lady Cats couldn’t find any other double digit scorers as Morton made things difficult on the defensive end the last three quarters.
LHS finished out a successful season 18-5 and McCurry had the team in position to win it all for the second time in his young career. The challenge now is getting back to that point – something that the coach said will be the expectation.
The Lady Cats will lose key seniors as Antonesha Robertson, Cambree Moore, Tah’rijah Johnson, Kelis Vaughn, Faith Moore all graduate this year. At this point, the program is ready to prove that it doesn’t rebuild, it reloads.
“It was a great year for these girls. I think they prepped themselves physically and mentally to get to that moment. The stage got too big for us, but we had a chance to win it all,” McMurry said.
“We unloaded a bunch of seniors that are key to the program. We lost six and four of those were starters. We’ll be led by Makayla Sam next year who has been leading us since she was a freshman. We also have a good group of juniors and sophomores that are ready to step up. I promise you that we will be back.”
