By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director
JACKSON — None of the current players or even coaches on the Pascagoula High boys’ basketball team were alive the last time the program played for a state basketball championship.
But, on Thursday night, the Panthers can lay to rest almost fifty years of frustration.
Pascagoula slipped past Jackson Callaway in thrilling fashion, 53-51 in overtime Monday afternoon here at The Mississippi Coliseum in the state Capital in the Class 6A overall Final Four semifinal round play. The win pushes PHS into the state championship contest Thursday night at 8 p.m., against Terry.
Both the Panthers, now 27-6 overall, and the Bulldogs, now 25-8, will be looking to capture the first state title on the hardwood in program history.

This is the first trip ever for Terry to the championship game, while it’s just the second time ever for PHS and the first in 49 years.
“This is rare territory for Pascagoula,” veteran PHS head coach Lorenxo Wright, who has guided his Panthers to the state championship in his 10th year at the helm of the program. “The players aren’t aware of the historical aspect at all.”
Forty nine years ago, to end the 1977 season, Barry Bargainer led the Panthers into the title game against Florence High that year. Florence, led by Greg Grim, stopped the Panthers state title hopes with a 77-59 decision behind Grim’s 37 points.
Grim, who went on to Mississippi State and was an All-Southeastern Conference performer several years later, then scored 40 against Utica in the Grand Slam Tournament to give the Eagles the overall state title as well.
Bargainer scored 28 points in his last game at Pascagoula, but it wasn’t enough.

Wright was born three weeks to the day after that game. The only person on the Panther bench Monday that was alive when the Panthers played in that game was longtime PHS athletic trainer Joe Davis, who was a young teenager back then.

When PHS takes on Terry Thursday night, that will mark 49 years to the day since that loss to Florence.
In fact, before Monday’s win, only two boy’s teams from Jackson County have ever made it to the final game of the year since the Mississippi High School Association and its predecessor, The Mississippi High School Literary and Athletic Association, have been handing out state championship hardware since 1922.
The first was 65 years ago. The only other boys team from Jackson County to play for a state hoops title was Ocean Springs in 1961. The Greyhounds fell to Starkville in close fashion 70-66. Ocean Springs enjoyed one of the best seasons in school hardwood history that season, going 32-10 led by head coach Tommy Glass guards Tommy Jones and Jack Bennie Hughes and 6-foot-6 center Travis Normand.

No prep basketball squad from Jackson County has ever won a state basketball championship. Only one girls’ team has ever reached the state finals and that was Moss Point in 2020.

Also, Davis has already announced his retirment at the end of the school year. His last ride with the PHS hoops program will be for all the marbles Thursday night. Exactly 49 years to the day from the last time it happened.