By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASCAGOULA — Home-standing Pascagoula split a pair of games with Ocean Springs Thursday night.
The Lady Greyhounds began the evening with a 49-44 win over the PHS girls, and the Panthers evened things up with a resounding 80-53 win over the Greyhounds.
The win pushes the PHS boys to 4-0 on the season as they aim to make back-to-back trips to the overall Class 6A state finals in Jackson.
Meanwhile, the win for the OSHS girls moved them to 3-0 and that betters the two win total for the team from last season.

The games were moved up a day because of both schools’ football programs taking part in the state playoffs Friday night.
In the boys game, Pascagoula jumped out to a quick first quarter lead and continued to extend the lead slightly as the contest unfolded.

“Great job from the guys off the bench in the 1st half,” PHS head coach Lorenzo Wright said. “I’m extremely proud of the effort from Evan Beck, it’s good to see the young guys play good minutes and contribute.”
Marcus Cooper tallied seven points for the Panthers in the opening quarter, including an old fashioned 3-point play, and PHS raced out to a 22-13 lead entering the second stanza.
Things continued to go downhill for the Greyhounds to end the first half as Panther Kelan Rich, who had a long range 3-pointer in the first frame, added two more trey in the second period and scored eight points in the quarter and Quey’Sean Taylor added three field goals for the Panthers for six more points and suddenly it was 37-23 PHS at intermission.

Any hopes of a second half comeback by the Greyhounds were quickly laid to rest by Rich and his teammates as Rich dropped in 10 more points including his fourth 3-pointer of the game and Justin Roque added eight points including a trey of his own and the Panthers doubled up on OSHS 31-15 to basically put the game away entering the fourth period with a 68-38 lead.

“Once we got to halftime and were able to avoid foul trouble the starters turned it up a notch,” Wright added.
Both Rich and Taylor paced Pascagoula with a co-game-high 21 points apiece on the night, while Roque added 12 points and Cooper 10 to the winning effort.

Ocean Springs, which fell to 1-2 on the year with its second straight loss, was guided by Jeremy Packer and his 14 points while Jayvon Williams added nine points.
The Greyhounds played without senior standout shooting guard Maddox Noblitt who was out after being ejected during a 74-51 loss to Yazoo City in Madison at “The Jump” event over the weekend.

On the girls side of the ledger, Layla Dailey came alive in the second half with 15 points after a scoreless first half and Starr Jackson scored 10 points in the first half and finished with 13 points total as OSHS registered that 49-44 win.
Bailee Lewis added nine points to the winning effort for the Lady Greyhounds.
Massyah Thomas topped PHS with a game-high 19 points and Khyliah Moore chipped in 14 points.Pascagoula’s Kelan Rich moves the ball down court as Ocean Springs defender —pursues Thursday night. (Photo by Bobby McDuffie)
The Lady Panthers drop to 1-2 with the loss.