Terrell County Lady Greenwave falls in state championship game

MACON — Terrell County hung around for as long as its offense allowed Thursday night.

But it wasn’t long enough.

The Lady Greenwave went through a tough offensive stretch in the second half as they fell 55-38 to Turner County in the Georgia High School Association Class A public school state championship game at the Macon Coliseum.

Terrell County opened the game with seven straight points. Jamya McDaniel hit a three and followed it up with a two. She dropped seven points in the first.

Turner County’s Mylashia Yancey was the Lady Rebels answer on offense. Yancey kept her team in the game with a nine-point first quarter. She scored nine of Turner’s 12 first-quarter points.

The Lady Rebels slowly chipped away at the lead in the second. The Lady Rebels went on a 13-4 run and took the lead when Brishuana Barnes hit a short jumper to make it 23-22.

Terrell County struggled to put it in the basket despite multiple good looks. One sequence in the second saw the Lady Greenwave miss three straight baskets on one possession.

“It hurts a lot,” Terrell County coach Tammye Jenkins-Ware said. “It really does hurt, but that is just how it goes.”

A 3-point play by McDaniel eventually pulled Terrell out of its small slump and tied the game at 25.

The two teams traded leads for the final two minutes of the first half until Turner scored four unanswered points with under a minute remaining. Terrell was outscored 20-10 in the second quarter.

Offense was hard to come by for the Lady Greenwave in the third quarter. They went more than three minutes in between their only two baskets of the third.

“At halftime, I think we focused too much on defense,” Jenkins-Ware said. “Maybe, our offense struggled a bit because we were trying to focus so much defensively. That is how it goes sometimes.”

Xariah Office extended Turner’s lead to eight points when she dialed it up from long distance with three minutes left in the third. Office scored all eight of the Lady Rebels’ third quarter points.

Despite pulling down 25 offensive rebounds, the Lady Greenwave only had 16 second-chance points. They came up empty on multiple possessions where they had more than one shot attempt.

“I’m going to tell the girls they have nothing to be ashamed of,” Jenkins-Ware said. “I hate to lose my seniors, but we still have players returning. Hopefully, that makes them dig deeper.”

Terrell’s offense went ice cold in the fourth quarter. The Lady Greenwave hit just one field goal and went through a four-minute scoring drought.

After shooting 34 percent in the first half, that number plummeted to 12.5 percent in the second half.

Office led all scorers with 22 points, while Yancey added 21.

Terrell was led by Jamya McDaniel’s 15 points and Jameil McDaniel who added 10.