Previewing the road to Jackson: Biloxi Girls Basketball

What started as a 24 team field in the class 6A playoffs for girls basketball is now down to just eight teams. Two of them are from the Gulf Coast, those being Harrison Central and Biloxi. The latter took the long road to the state tournament in Jackson after losing to the former in overtime in the region 8 tournament championship game.
It doesn’t get any bigger than the class 6A state tournament in Jackson. Biloxi small forward Gabby Fantroy said, “It’s scary, I guess you could say, because it’s a bigger stage, bigger audience, but we kind of just focus on our goal, and don’t really make it bigger than what it is.”
Biloxi head girls basketball coach Devin Hill said, “The biggest deal we’re dealing with is the fear of the unknown, you know, the big-eyed effect walking into the coliseum with the backdrop. It’s a different atmosphere.”
The Lady Indians haven’t made it this far in more than three decades. They weren’t really expected to after winning just 11 games a year ago. Biloxi power forward Shylia McGee said, “Like, we want to win, but it’s like everybody like they didn’t expect us, like even from our school they didn’t expect us to win, to get this far.”
“We’re kind of like I guess you could say an underdog. Not many people were expecting us to get this far, so we just want to keep showing everybody what we can do,” Fantroy.
“That’s luck, that’s fate, that’s skill, whatever you want to call it, we’re one of the eight teams. But you can make no bones about it that the eight teams that are left can play basketball,” said Hill.
Tupelo is one of those eight teams coming into its quarterfinal match-up against the Lady Indians with only five losses. There’s no denying these Biloxi girls are ready and battle tested. More than a third of their games were decided in either overtime or by five points or less. Big Red went 6-5 in those games. “When we’ve come, when we’ve pulled them together in overtime or in the fourth quarter, it’s shown us that we should have beat that team from the beginning.”
“One thing that’s never unknown and that’s effort. We control our effort, night in and night out. We control how much effort we put into the defensive end of the floor, and we believe that if you can play solid defense for 32 minutes that you’re always going to have a chance to win,” said Hill.
That’s all the Lady Indians can really ask for is a chance. They may be considered the underdogs, but at this point every team’s magic number is one in the same. “It changes the mindset because the magic number is three, but at the same time it’s either win or go home. So you could say we have three games left, but if you don’t win you don’t advance,” said Fantroy.
“Our goal right now is to focus on going on a three-game winning streak, and hopefully if we do what we’re capable of doing, playing how we’re capable of playing, maybe we can surprise some people,” said Hill.
The Lady Indians tip things off with Tupelo from the big house up in Jackson at 7 p.m. on Saturday.