Myrtle Beach girls top Wilson to reach state championship game

Myrtle Beach players heeded their coach’s advice.

Because of it, the Seahawks are one win away from a state championship

With a slow-bleed effort that crippled Wilson’s game plan via forced foul trouble, Myrtle Beach defeated the Tigers 47-38 on Friday at the Florence Civic Center. It sends coach Jennifer Dennison’s team to the University of South Carolina’s Colonial Life Arena, where a matchup against Class AAA No. 1 Dreher will determine which girls squad is the best in the division this season.

The Seahawks can only hope they are able to execute as well as they did Friday, when they led wire-to-wire.

“It was drawn up perfectly,” Dennison said. “But we were trying to tell our girls to just play focused and just play smart. … As long as the girls listen to me, I’m going to carry them where they need to go.”

After the latest strategy came to fruition, the Seahawks probably won’t be arguing.

While everyone was paying attention to Nia Sumpter’s 10-point first quarter, something else was happening on a slightly quieter scale. One by one, each of Wilson’s top three players –Bryanna Goodson, D’Asia Gregg and Shamiyah Barnes –were getting dinged with a foul here or there as Sumpter, Kiana Adderton and Keocia Walker, Myrtle Beach’s top players, pressured the basket.

By halftime, Wilson had 11 team fouls, not an overly insane number. However, each of its stars had at least two and fellow starter Keturah Hunter already had three.

“I do think the momentum at the very beginning was very tough,” Tigers coach Gerrin Harrison said. “[Then] we come out for the second half and Gregg had three fouls… It put us in a situation because I need those three on the floor most of the time. We play Myrtle Beach enough, [Dennison] knows that.”

With Wilson relying on those three for offense, its defensive strategy had to change in order to keep them on the floor. Myrtle Beach exposed that, too.

All of a sudden, the contested drives that came the first half turned into considerably more open shots. The only reason the Seahawks didn’t blow the score wide open was a consistent number of short misses around the basket.

Not even that mattered much.

Myrtle Beach finished 17-of-24 from the free-throw line, with all 24 attempts coming from Walker, Sumpter and Adderton. Those three finished with 43 of the Seahawks’ 47 points, but their rebounding numbers were equally influential.

With Wilson also having to back off the glass some after some of those fouls, Myrtle Beach pounced on that, too. Sumpter finished with 17 rebounds, Adderton had 14 and Walker, who stands all of 4-foot-10, piled up 12.

It was an attacking style that started early – the Seahawks scored 3.7 seconds into the game – and continued throughout. The payoff was an on-court dance in front of their fans, not to mention the trip to Columbia.

“We just wanted to prove we deserve to be here,” Sumpter said. “But we’re not [content], so we’re going to keep working hard. Hopefully we’ll come out on top this year.”

This story was originally published February 26, 2016 at 10:14 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach girls top Wilson to reach state championship game."