Young Atlantic Collegiate basketball program marches on to state championship game
It’s been a quick rise to the top of Class 2A for the Atlantic Collegiate boys basketball team.
The Armada is headed to the state championship game in its second season after defeating Andrew Jackson, 45-40, on Tuesday at the Florence Center.
Atlantic Collegiate will face the High Point Academy/Liberty winner at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
Atlantic, the public charter school in Conway, opened last year and wasn’t eligible for the postseason in its first year as an at-large member in the SC High School League.
This season the Armada is 23-3 and won the Region 7-2A championship. AC’s only two in-state losses were to Class 4A Wilson and Class 3A Oceanside Collegiate.
“Our guys, they believe in one another, and they built on that over the years of playing together,” Atlantic coach Tanner Massey said. “This is a decade of them playing together (in youth basketball). That is the key.”
Massey said his team had that game-seven, win-or-go-home mentality during the playoffs. Before the game, he showed his team a picture of a lion full of blood around its mouth as an illustration of how hard his team was going to have to fight to get to the championship.
“We had a lot of guys that were falling, but we picked each other up,” Massey said.
Jaylen Bellamy was one of those who battled injury during the game, cramping up late in the fourth quarter. Bellamy led the way with 17 points and had six of the team’s 10 points in the quarter. The senior hit two free throws with 55 seconds left that put the Armada up 43-38.
“I knew I was going to knock them down,” Bellamy said. “We practice shooting every day. It wasn’t any pressure.”
Jamie Brooks added 10 points and was out several minutes in the third quarter with a groin injury before returning with eight seconds left in the third.
Atlantic struggled early and took more than five minutes for its first point of the game and trailed 7-4 after one quarter.
Bellamy said a lot of it might have had to do with nerves and playing in a bigger arena. The Armada eventually settled down and got in a rhythm. Seeger Medalie hit a 3-pointer to give AC its first lead at 12-11.
Atlantic led by as many as seven points in the third quarter before Andrew Jackson closed the gap when Brooks went to the bench.
Zakaden Clyburn led Andrew Jackson with 11 points.
