By Robert Wilson
Whit Hughes has been known for most of his life as the sixth man on the 1996 Mississippi State Final Four basketball team.
He is mostly now known as Presley Hughes’ dad, especially after his daughter’s performance Tuesday night in a rematch of last year’s MAIS Overall Tournament championship game.
Presley Hughes, a 6-foot sophomore, was largely responsible for limiting PCS senior point guard and William Carey signee Addyson Sherer – considered one of the best scorers in Mississippi – to only 13 points and Hughes also scored 10 points to help defending Overall and Class 6A state champion Madison-Ridgeland Academy to a 49-43 victory over Presbyterian Christian School in the first Class 6A conference game of the season at PCS in Hattiesburg.
MRA – which was playing without starter Allie Redding (ankle injury) – improved to 21-2 overall with its only Mississippi loss, a last-second defeat to Leake Academy in the second game of the season. PCS dropped to 17-5, its first loss to a MAIS team this season.
MRA defeated PCS 42-29 for the Overall championship and defeated PCS 53-49 for the 6A state title last season.
MRA led most of the game Tuesday, ahead 13-12 after one quarter, 26-20 at halftime and 39-37 after three quarters.
Hughes’ defensive pressure was important to winning this game. Hughes had a seven-inch height advantage on Sherer, 6-foot to 5-5. Hughes, who made 5 of 10 shots from the field, also had 8 assists, 5 rebounds and 1 blocked shot.
“Presley is a great defensive player, one of the best I’ve ever had,” MRA coach Stephen Force said. “She has good size and great footwork. Presley did a great job on Addyson, but one player is not going to stop that young lady. The rest of our players helped Presley and Addyson didn’t get as many shots off as she normally does. Not only did Addyson have a 6-footer guarding her, then we had a 5-11 and 5-10 helping out. We did a good job dictating where she went and what she did. Also, we thought PCS would slack off Presley on the offensive end and give her some open shots and she took advantage of that.”
PCS coach Drew Smith said Sherer was not at full speed after turning an ankle last week and didn’t play in PCS’ wins over Picayune High and Clinton Christian School this past weekend.
She came in averaging 20 points this season and reached the 2,500 career point mark Tuesday night. Sherer now has 2,504 career points, second in school history. Trista Magee scored 3,131 points from 2010-2015. Sherer passed Trista’s sister, Katye, earlier this year. Katye scored 2,454 points from 2005-2010. The Magee girls were a part of PCS’ only two Overall titles in 2008 and 2014. Sherer is trying to bring a third to Hattiesburg.
Sherer scored a combined 50 points against MRA in last year’s 6A and Overall championship games.
“MRA did a great job as always of being prepared,” said Smith, in his fourth season at PCS and 10th overall. “Stephen does a great job. Today, they were better than us. They made big plays when they had to and you have to give them credit. I think we will be fine. We beat MRA the first time we played them at MRA last season, and they beat us when it mattered most. As long as we let this game make us better, we will be fine. We have to be a little smarter on shot selections and I as the coach have to put us in better situations to score. I told the girls I have plenty of fault in this and we have to keep improving together.”
Force is only one of three active MAIS girls coaches with three or more Overall titles (Jackson Academy’s Jan Sojourner has six and Pillow Academy’s Durwin Carpenter has four). Force won Overalls in 2007, 2015 and last season. He has 731 career wins in his 28 seasons, 590 wins in 22 seasons at MRA.
Hughes and freshman guard Anna Morgan Anderson are his two returning starters from last year’s team.
Anderson had a game-high 17 points, including three 3-pointers in the third quarter, the last one with 5 seconds to play in the quarter for a 39-37 lead. PCS junior Alice Pennebaker, who scored 11 points, made a basket for a 37-36 lead with 12 seconds to play and it looked like the Lady Bobcats were gaining momentum. Anderson made 5 of 8 shots from the field, 3 of 4 from 3-point range, and had 6 rebounds and 3 assists.
“Anna Morgan is a workaholic,” Force said. “She studies the game. Anna Morgan is in great shape. She played well in the overall last year as an eighth grader. No moment is too big for her. She recognizes offenses and defenses and has a great knowledge of the game.”
Getting this first conference was big for MRA, especially against of the favorites to win 6A and Overall and at their place.
“This is a tough place to play,” Force said. “PCS is really good and you better bring it and they will get you. I know we will see them again and they will be there in the end.”
MRA BOYS 58, PCS 43
MRA – the only undefeated boys team in Mississippi – improved to 23-0, the best start in school history, in the 6A conference opener in Hattiesburg.
PCS – which dropped to 19-4 (its first MAIS loss this season) – jumped out to a 15-10 lead after one quarter, but MRA rallied for a 25-20 halftime lead and never trailed again.
MRA 6-6 junior forward Ashton Magee – a Division I prospect and a member of the PriorityOne Bank/Mississippi Scoreboard Metro Jackson Preseason Elite 11 Team – had a game-high 19 points. EJ Dampier – a 6-9 eighth grader who is rated the No. 1 player in the country in the Class of 2028 by Coast to Coast Preps and son of former Mississippi State and NBA star Erick Dampier (who is an MRA assistant coach) – and junior guard Jas Smith had 12 points each. Senior guard Sam Hailey had 11 points.
MRA coach Richard Duease – the winningest basketball coach in Mississippi history and the second winningest active boys basketball coach in the country – has never had a team go undefeated. The 1988-89 MRA team won its first 22 games before losing to Hillcrest Christian. That team finished 32-3 and lost to Brookhaven Academy in triple overtime in the Overall championship game when Chris Thurman scored a tournament record 54 points. The best record was 35-3 in 2015-2016 season when MRA assistant coach Harper Hudnall was a senior and the Patriots won the Overall title.
Duease won his 1,824th career game (1,232 boys and 592 girls) in his 49th season. He has won 41 state titles – No. 41 came last year when he won the MAIS Class 6A state championship – and has won 15 Overall Tournament titles (13 boys and two girls, all at MRA). Duease is in his 42nd season at MRA.
“We came out tight and PCS came out shooting 3s,” Duease said. “We settled down, had two or three dunks, and fought our way back in it. We cut the lead to 1 and the next thing I know we are up by 15. We loosened up, spread the floor, and started playing.”
PCS was led by senior guard Cannon Crowder with 14 points and senior point guard Turner Vance with 11 points.
“We just didn’t knock down shots,” said PCS coach Josh Sherer, who has 342 high school wins in 16 seasons at Central Hinds, Lamar School, and PCS and 91 wins in five seasons at Wesley College in Florence and won an Overall girls title at Lamar in 2019. “We were unofficially 6 for 30 from the 3-point line. When you shoot that poorly, it puts so much pressure on your defense. I thought we guarded well for the first quarter and most of the second. But we continued to miss on open looks and quit sharing the ball like we normally do. We had key guys that didn’t get shots, like (sophomore guard) Jet Henderson, and others that just had a bad shooting night.”
