Gulfport girls struggle early, fall at Terry in 1st round

The Gulfport Lady Admirals dug themselves a hole and they just couldn’t find their way out.

Behind a strong second quarter and a big size advantage, Terry held off Gulfport 48-41 in the first round of the MHSAA Girls Class 6A playoffs on Monday night.

Terry (22-7) will travel to St. Martin on Friday in the second round. St. Martin beat Terry 37-36 back in November.

“We dug ourselves to big of a hole early and our shots weren’t falling,” Gulfport coach Donny Fuller said. “We didn’t do a good job of defending their two best scorers in the first half and couldn’t buy a basket and just couldn’t overcome it.”

Nope.

Terry ended the first half on a 15-3 run to go up 28-13 at half.

The Lady Bulldogs were up as much as 18, but the Lady Admirals fought back to cut it to 9 at 37-28 at the end of the third quarter.

Gulfport did cut the lead down to 6 late in the fourth quarter, but it was just too little to late.

Whitney Johnson had 11 points to lead Gulfport.

“I’m proud of the girls for fighting. If Whitney Johnson can play like she did tonight we will be fine,” Fuller said. “Just one of those games were shots don’t fall.”

Mississippi State signee Nyah Tate had a game-high 21 points to lead Terry.

“Gulfport was a good defensive team and we knew coming in we’d have to use our size advantage,” said Terry coach Angelia Johnson. “We played sluggish and turned it over a few times and that helped them get back in it.”

This story was originally published February 20, 2017 at 10:07 PM with the headline "Gulfport girls struggle early, fall at Terry in 1st round."