Terry stuns Gulfport to advance to Jackson, 60-56

GULFPORT - The Terry boys basketball team forced Gulfport into a whopping 25 turnovers on the way to a 60-56 upset victory in overtime Saturday night at Bert Jenkins Gymnasium.

Terry (17-11) advances to face Southaven at 4 p.m. on Saturday in the Class 6A quarterfinals in Jackson.

Gulfport's season comes up short of a trip to Jackson for the second consecutive season after winning the Class 6A state championship in 2014.

"I'm proud of the team," Gulfport coach Owen Miller said. "We had an OK year for our standard, but Terry played really well. Truthfully, they were better than I thought they were after seeing them on Wednesday. They played much better than they did Wednesday (in a 61-46 win over Petal.) It's a credit to them."

Terry started the game extremely hot from the field, led by as many as 16 at one point in the first quarter and led 23-9 after the first eight minutes.

"That's what we've been doing all year, getting off to good starts," Terry coach Matthew Scott said. "We really do try to jump out on people and attack them. People aren't ready for how hard we run and how fast we get the ball up and down the floor. We jump out on them until they adjust. When they adjust, we've got to hold on."

Scott credited his team's quick start to a box-and-one defense.

"Who they really flow through on offense is (senior point guard Tyrell McArthur)," Scott said. "We tried to get it out of his hands from the tip. The box-and-one didn't let him touch it and that disrupted their flow early. That's why we got off to such a good start because they were a little out of sync."

Gulfport (19-11) started the second quarter on an 8-0 run and Terry led 29-23 at halftime.

Neither team could do much on offense in third quarter, but Gulfport managed to cut the lead to 37-32 headed into the fourth.

Gulfport's struggles on offense picked up again in the fourth quarter as it went scoreless for 4-and-a-half minutes midway through the period.

That's when McArthur began to will his team back in the game.

A 3-pointer by McArthur with 2:03 remaining sparked a 10-2 run for Gulfport to close out regulation. McArthur provided eight points in the mad dash to force overtime with the game tied at 46-46.

"He struggled the whole game," Miller said. "They boxed-and-oned him. We started getting back in the second quarter when they got out of it and played a 2-3 zone. We didn't attack at all. We couldn't get into the teeth of the zone.

"We just weren't sharp. But we did fight, played hard and got back in the game. It just wasn't our night."

Just like it did in regulation, Gulfport never held the lead in overtime.

Terry converted on eight free throws in overtime and dominated the final 2:30 of the extra frame.

"We won it on the free throw line," Scott said. "We worked on free throws before we left Terry today. That's been one of our big things all year. I'm glad we stepped up."

McArthur scored 14 to lead Gulfport and Miles Daniels added 12.

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 10:22 PM with the headline "Terry stuns Gulfport to advance to Jackson, 60-56 ."