By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASS CHRISTIAN — The Pass Christian boys maintained a collision course with Greene County for the top spot in Region 8-4A later this week as the Pirates beat visiting Moss Point 56-41 Tuesday night.
Both the Pirates and the Wildcats now stand at 3-0 in the region race, after GCHS beat Poplarville 69-29 Tuesday night also. The two teams face off Friday night in Leakesville for the top spot in the standings mid-way through the league slate.
Pass Christian actually led Moss Point by just four points, at 30-26, at halftime thanks in large part to Tiger standout forward Quey’Sean Taylor who tallied 13 points in the first half.
But the Pirates righted the ship in the second half and outscored Moss Point 30-11 to pull out the win in convincing fashion.

“We knew that Moss Point would present us with some problems,” Pass Christian veteran head coach Buddy Kennedy, who just celebrated his 600th win as a head coach last week, said. “They are athletic and physical, we certainly didn’t play as well as we would like to but I thought we battled hard defensively and got enough done on offense to win.”
L.J. Jaynes led the Pirates with 13 points in the win over Moss Point, while Landon Hall and Kyran Laneaux finished with 12 points apiece as the Pirates moved to 13-6 overall on the season.
For the Tigers, Taylor tallied 18 points to lead the way.
Pass Christian made it a sweep on the evening as the Lady Pirates followed a similar script as the boys and nipped Moss Point 32-31. Pass Christian moved to 8-11 overall under first-year head coach Caroline Lumpkin, and the Lady Pirates stand 2-1 in league play while the Lady Tigers drop to 1-2 in the region race and 10-11 overall.

Moss Point was looking for its second straight region win after getting past Poplarville 29-19 last week, and the Lady Tigers in turn took a 19-14 lead into halftime.
But Pass Christian responded with a third quarter surge, out-scoring Moss Point 10-3 in the third frame to take a slight 24-22 lead into the fourth period.
With the teams battling back and forth, Pass Christian’s Kamiyah Pruitt gave the Lady Pirates the final one-point lead with a free throw with 10 seconds left to play.
“We had a terrible start, it looked like we had bricks in our shoes and at halftime we had to change that,” Lumpkin said. “I have only two kids on the floor with any varsity experience. Thankfully, in the second half, we found a way.”
Pruitt tallied a game-high 21 points for PCHS.
The Pass Christian girls will also play Greene County on the road Friday night.
Both Moss Point squads remain on the road and head to Hancock County Friday night to battle Bay High in the Tigerdome in region play.