By Robert Wilson
Madison St. Joseph hasn’t won a boys basketball state championship since the 1950s.
Head coach Michael Howell and senior guards Joe Anthony and Chris Gordon are two wins away from changing that this week.
Howell, Anthony and Gordon took one more step closer to that historic title Saturday night as Howell guided Anthony and Gordon, who combined for 57 points, 13 assists and 10 steals to a 67-59 victory over Magnolia Heights School for the MAIS North Class 4A championship before an estimated 400 at Stribling Court/Durwin Carpenter Court at Pillow Academy in Greenwood.
St. Joe – ranked No. 9 in Mississippi and No. 2 in MAIS Class 4A by MaxPreps – improved to 25-2, won its ninth game in a row and meets defending MAIS Overall Tournament champion Jackson Prep, a 71-41 loser to Madison-Ridgeland Academy in the South Class 4A championship game, Wednesday at Prep in Flowood.
Magnolia Heights – ranked No. 34 in Mississippi and No. 5 in MAIS Class 4A – dropped to 17-8 and meets MRA Wednesday at Prep. The Chiefs had a huge win in Friday’s semifinals with a 60-55 victory over Jackson Academy, a team they had lost to twice in the regular season, to end JA’s 10-game winning streak.
The 6-foot-3 Anthony, a Jones County Junior College signee, had 37 points (four short of his career high of 41 points against Yazoo County), 24 points in the first half, 10 rebounds, 6 assists and 6 steals in Saturday’s championship game. The 6-foot Gordon, a Meridian Community College commitment, had 20 points, 7 assists and 4 steals.
“We came out with good intensity and the guys were locked in,” said Howell, who is in his ninth season at St. Joe and led the Bruins to a school record 28 wins (with only five losses), a third-place finish in the MAIS Class 5A and the first round of the Overall Tournament three years ago. “Having six seniors that have been through battles and know the importance of details in huge for us. Obviously, Mag Heights is one of the biggest teams in the state (with four players 6-4 or better) and we knew we would have to play great post defense on those guys. Our guards did a great job helping out forwards Chase Cox and Jhayce Harris and limited their touches. We went on a run early and extended the lead to 14 in the second quarter but Chase picked up his second foul and when he went out, Mag Heights made a run to cut into the lead. Joe hit two big shots – one being a buzzer beater – with less than 30 seconds left to push the lead back to 13 at the half. Mag Heights is well coached and play hard so we knew they wouldn’t go away. In the second half, we got a little out of sync on offense, but our defensive pressure and experience was the key down the stretch.”
Anthony averaged 26 points and nine rebounds in three tournament games. Gordon averaged 24 points, and had a game-high 29 points against Hartfield in the semifinals. Anthony, Gordon, Cox, and Ashton Walker made all tournament.
“We’re happy we won this week and brought home the north state championship and our hard work has been paying off,” Anthony said. “We know we still have more to improve on for state and overall and have to get back to work.”
“All of our hard work in the offseason has paid off and made us hard to beat,” Gordon said. “We look forward to finishing what we started and win the Division I tournament this week.”
Magnolia Heights has had a rough last two weeks. It started out recovering from the ice storm, which caused much of area in North Mississippi where the school (Senatobia) to be without power. The Chiefs had to reschedule its last district game with Pillow for this past Monday night.
“This week was tough, with all the ice we got last week, we struggled to get to the gym and had to cancel some games,” said Magnolia Heights coach Zack Suddoth, who is in his first season as head coach at his alma mater and was head coach for eight seasons at MHSAA Class 2A Strayhorn. “This forced us to have to play our final district game on Monday vs. Pillow and then having to turn around and play a solid Heritage team at 4 p.m. on Tuesday. We played four games this week after not practicing or playing the week prior due to the ice storm. I could not be more proud of the grit and grind these boys displayed even when the deck was stacked against them. Our team is full of talent and each player is different. The thing that I love about them is the fact that they hate losing and not one player is worried about who does the scoring, they have each other’s back and it’s been that way since they were in junior high. We fell down double digits at half in all three games in the North half. We were down 15 to Heritage, 10 to JA and 13 to St. Joe. Even being down our guys never thought about laying down and quitting. They came out each half with determination that they were winning the game. They were able to complete the comeback the first two games but the closest we got to St. Joe was cutting the lead to five points in the fourth. Bottom line is we have to do a better job of not getting ourselves in those situations. If we can do that I feel like we can play with anyone.”
Kaleb Dunn, a 6-4 junior forward, led Magnolia Heights with 18 points, 9 rebounds and 3 steals against St. Joe. Jack Mills, a 6-8 junior center who didn’t start because he was battling the flu, had 14 points off the bench. Quincy Pratt, a 6-4 junior guard who is one of the baseball players in Mississippi and is a Ole Miss baseball commitment, had 13 points off the bench. He normally starts, but is recovering from an injury in January.
Magnolia Heights get a chance to see if it can do what no other MAIS team has been able to do this year, and that’s beat MRA, ranked No. 2 in Mississippi and No. 1 in MAIS Class 4A by MaxPreps. The Patriots only have two losses, to MHSAA Class 5A Columbus and Zachary High, the top rated team in Louisiana, this season.
Magnolia Heights is two wins away from its first state title since 2016.
Magnolia Heights and MRA haven’t played since 2018 and Magnolia Heights hasn’t beaten MRA since 2015.
“We are excited to get the chance to play the best this week,” Suddoth said. “Our goal has always been to be one of the best teams in the state, and in order to do that you have to play against the best. We know it will a tough task, but we are excited for the opportunity to play MRA this Wednesday as we compete to win the Class 4A, Division I state title.”
MRA is led by 6-10 sophomore forward EJ Dampier, ranked No. 3 in the country in the Class of 2028 by ESPN and made second-team freshmen All-American by MaxPreps and son of former Mississippi State and NBA star Erick Dampier, now an assistant coach at MRA. The Patriots will be facing possibly the tallest team they have played this season with players who are 6-8, 6-6, 6-4 and 6-4.
