JACKSON — Eight minutes.
That’s all it took for McComb’s state championship aspirations to slowly vanish into the Mississippi Coliseum ceiling.
(Below is a video recap of the game)
Callaway used a back-breaking 19-0 run and later outscored McComb, 23-6, in the second quarter en route to a 67-45 win Tuesday afternoon in the Class 5A boys state semifinals at the Mississippi Coliseum.
The Chargers advanced to Saturday’s 5A championship game at 2:30 p.m., where they will meet Provine, which crushed Pascagoula, 75-42.
“Detrimental,” McComb coach Hilton Harrell said of the second quarter. “We didn’t make shots and they were making shots in that second quarter.”
McComb (22-10) played well enough to win in the first, third and fourth quarters, but the second quarter was too much of a hole to dig out of. Confidence remained high after trailing only 15-10 after the first quarter, but 19-straight points to start the second quarter helped Callaway build a 29-10 lead.
Those eight minutes would come back to haunt McComb as the Tigers managed just two field goals in the quarter. Antonio Cowart’s long field goal with 1:45 on the clock ended the 19-0 run along with an eight-plus minute scoring drought.
“If we could have gotten the second quarter going, it would have been a close ball game,” Harrell said. “We felt like we would have had a chance and we had a big letdown in the second quarter.”
Coming into Tuesday’s game, Harrell liked his chances if McComb could hold Callaway (26-7) standout Malik Newman to less than 20 points. The sophomore, who was rated by 247sports .com on Monday as the No. 1 prospect for the 2015 class, was held to just 17 points on 6 of 17 shooting, which snapped an eight-game streak with 20 or more points scored.
It hardly mattered, though, as fellow Dandy Dozen forward TreShawn Bolden had his way down low and finished with a game-high 18 points and 13 rebounds.
McComb, which shot just 39 percent for the game, started in a 2-3 zone defense and held Newman to three points in the first quarter. The Tigers opened the second quarter in man-to-man and Bolden went to work.
“We didn’t expect TreShawn to score (18),” Harrell said. “We felt like we could hold him to about 12 but I didn’t expect him to play that well.”
Although the game was firmly in hand with Callaway up 38-16 at the break, Bolden drove a stake right through McComb’s heart with eight straight points for the Chargers to start the third quarter. Bolden put on a clinic and scored using spin moves, the up-and-under shot and on offensive rebounds.
“To be honest, it really makes the game for me easier. Just having a big man inside that can dominant on the glass and scoring,” Newman said of Bolden. “It makes the defense collapse and it gives me my open shot. Whenever Tre comes to play, my game is much easier.”
McComb played Callaway even in the second half as both teams scored 29 points and the Tigers even made a run at the end of the third quarter, which brought the McComb faithful to their feet.
A 3-pointer by Antonio Johnson, who led McComb with 15 points, just before the buzzer sounded capped a 11-2 run, yet the Tigers were still down 50-30.
McComb’s only lead came three minutes into the game via a 6-4 advantage. The Tigers had a nice pace going before Callaway ended the first quarter on a 11-4 run.
“We wanted to make them play defense for a while, but some of the kids got anxious and took ill-advised shots,” Harrell said. “Against good teams, you can't do that.”
