The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Seven teams win first state titles
McEachern’s boys, Westlake’s girls finish their seasons unbeaten.
Seven Georgia high school basketball teams won state titles for the first time this season. Four teams went undefeated. The final day of the state finals Saturday in Macon added to those historic totals.
McEachern’s boys and Westlake’s girls became the first pair of teams in the highest class to finish unbeaten since 1995, and Tri-Cities’ boys and Lanier’s girls won their first state titles in any sport for their schools, each after trailing by six points in the fourth quarter.
Westlake’s girls (30-0) defeated Collins Hill, 60-53, in the Class AAAAAAA final. Lydia Freeman and Raven Johnson scored 16 points apiece. Brianna Turnage had 14 points. Freeman scored eight in the fourth quarter, when Collins Hill got within three points. The 6-foot-5 junior didn’t play organized basketball until she was a freshman.
“Every (championship) is sweet, but this time we did it with no seniors,” Westlake coach Hilda Hankerson said. “Everybody on this team rode the bench last year except for one person (Region 2 player of the year Raven Johnson). For this team to do this is an outstanding feat, and to go undefeated is a miracle.”
Westlake has won 50 consecutive games, not counting a post-season loss in a national tournament last spring.
Collins Hill’s Javyn Nicholson, a Georgia signee, scored 17 points and had 15 rebounds.
McEachern (32-0) beat defending champion Meadowcreek, 62-54, in the AAAAAAA boys final and got 20 points from Sharife Cooper, 17 in the first half. Isaac Okoro scored 16 and had four rebounds. Alyn Breed scored 15 points with six rebounds. McEachern led by 10 at halftime, and Meadowcreek was never again closer than four.
It was McEachern’s first state
title in boys basketball.
“I’m really relieved,” McEachern coach Mike Thompson said. “I thought some about being 31-1 and how those kids would have to carry that around, you know, how McEachern didn’t win a state championship. That would have been a shame, to have beaten the people we’ve beaten ... but that would have been said.”
McEachern is ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in most national polls after playing in high-profile events in Florida, Massachusetts and Missouri.
Also winning boys titles for the first time were Tri-Cities (AAAAAA) and Therrell (AA). Girls teams winning their first were Lanier (AAAAAA), Carver-Columbus (AAAA), Douglass (AA) and Marion County (A Public).
Tri-Cities, which opened in south Fulton County in 1988, beat Tucker, 46-43, on Da’Marcus Johnson’s 3-point shot as time ran out, breaking a 43-43 tie. Tucker had led by six in the fourth quarter, but the team’s big man, Jermontae Hill, fouled out. Johnson led Tri-Cities (26-6) with 13 points. Peyton Daniels added 12 points and five rebounds.
Lanier, which opened in Gwinnett County in 2010, upset No. 1 Lovejoy 52-45 in the AAAAAA girls final. Kalen Surles scored seven of her nine points in the fourth quarter, when Lanier erased a six-point deficit by outscoring Lovejoy 17-4 over the first 6½ minutes.
“The fourth quarter is always our quarter,” she said. Surles also had seven assists and four rebounds.
Nala Lawrence scored a team-high 10 points. Lizzie Campbell had eight points and eight rebounds.
Lanier got its championship with its third coach in three seasons, Tim Slater, who was hired off Rome’s staff.
“Sure, it’s my first year here,” Slater said, “but it is not their first year. Those girls, they played their tails off. They played about as hard as a team could play. I can’t tell you how proud I am of my seniors and how proud I am of my team.”