(This is a a column of opinion by Curtis Rockwell, the Sports Director of SouthMiss6 Sports, who has covered over a thousand Pascagoula High games of all types over the past three decades plus.)

JACKSON — Finally.
That’s how many Pascagoula High fans of all shapes and sizes, of all colors and creeds and of all ages and eras must have felt sometime around 9:30 p.m., Thursday night when the final buzzer sounded in the Class 6A prep basketball state championship game here at The Mississippi Coliseum.
Finally. The wait is over.
It took the Panther program almost 50 years since its last trip to the state finals to get back there, and about eight decades after first fielding a team PHS finally brought home that elusive state title, nipping Terry 56-54 in thrilling fashion.

And it went right down to the final seconds, when up by that final count a potential game-tying shot at the buzzer by the Bulldogs bounded off the rim and sent Panther Nation into a jubilant celebration that was felt all the way back to Jackson County.
A Panther team making its third straight trip to the final four and its eighth appearance here at The Big House in the past 15 seasons was finally able to head back home with a smile and a Gold Ball and not a frown and empty-handed.
“This is awesome and something you can’t take away from us. First state championship in Pascagoula history,” veteran PHS head coach Lorenzo Wright, in his 10th year at the helm of the Panthers, said. “Three years now, we finally did it. This is not the team you might have expected to do this, but this group was different. They fought all year, so it was all worth it. They just fought and came together and gelled at the right time.”
And Wright was, well, right. Pascagoula stood just 4-4 overall in late November after a 72-49 loss to this same Terry team. But this, in no way, shape or form, was the same Panther team that took the court Thursday night
Not even close.

Exactly a month later, PHS dropped a game to Daphne, Ala. in the opening round of the Jackson County Christmas Tournament. At that point, the Panthers were 10-6 overall after two straight losses.
Now, keep in mind, PHS had flashy records of 29-1 two years ago as well as 26-4 last season when they made their way here to this Capital City to play of all the marbles.
However, thanks in large part to the arrival of twin transfers Adam and Jacob Griffin from Booker T. Washington High in Pensacola, Fla., four days later, that loss to the Trojans four days after Christmas was the last of the season for the Panthers.

The Griffin brothers formed an explosive trio with PHS three-year starter and Class 6A “Mr. Basketball” Blake Nettles, and combined with holdovers Ireyion Harvey, Marcus Cooper and Tamir Boykin along with Will Rogers and C.J. Rogers they went on to lead Wright’s crew on an 18-game win streak to close out the current campaign.
Adam Griffin paced PHS with 15 points and was named Most Valuable Player in the historic win Thursday night. However, he fouled out in the final few minutes, and his brother was sidelined with an eye issue.
So, junior Evan Beck, who had been displaced in the starting line-up after the twins became eligible, sank a free throw to result in the final points in the win that will be remembered for years and years to come.

In fact, Beck joined Nettles, Cooper, Boykin and Harvey on the court for the final game-winning stretch. So, in a season full of changes and adjustments for the Panthers, it was the original starting five from earlier in the season for PHS when the final bell rang.

Old School, of sorts, if you will.
And make no mistake about it, in addition to the current PHS players and coaches, this win is for the former Panther players and supporters that came so close as well.
This one is for Barry Bargainer, Jerry Sipp, Craig Martin, Greg Richey and Don Brown, the five starters on the 1977 Panther squad, this only previous one to play for a state title.
This one is for Dale Brown, Issac Brown, Fred Williams, Antonio Harvey and Elbert Rogers, the starting five on the 1988 South State championship team, the first ever in program history, and a team that has long been considered perhaps the best in the history of the program.

And yes, this one is for the late Tom McKiernon and David Lispcomb, the respective head coaches of the 1977 and 1988 squads.
And this one was for longtime PHS Athletic Trainer Joe Davis, who was a student during the 1977 run to the state championship and was on the bench for his final run with the Panthers here at The Big House Thursday night. He is retiring soon.
And this one was for the late Walter “Waldo” Thornton, a former Big 8 Conference winning defensive lineman at PHS, who sat behind the microphone calling many PHS games of all types over the years. Waldo loved his Panthers.
As does Bill Glenn, who came in behind Waldo and has been the longtime voice of the Panthers over the radio airwaves for some three decades now on several fronts.

And this one is also for anyone that spent time in the sports department at the now defunct Mississippi Press newspaper, like former Sports Editors Mike Wixon and Mark Bryant, along with myself and sports writer Creg Stephenson. Each of us spent thousands of hours following the Panthers on the hardwood over the years, along with the late photographer Jerry Moulder, wondering, aloud at times, if this day would ever come.
This is also a major milestone for the hundreds of thousands of Pascagoula High School basketball fans that paid their hard-earned money over the past 80 years or so at the door of the gym to see their Panthers play on the hardwood. Folks like Richard Lucas, Danny “Toad” Smith, Jim Milstead (also a former PHS head coach) and Gary Stevens and Carroll Reeves, among countless others.
They finally did it Panther Nation. The drought is over.
Finally.
(This is a a column of opinion by Curtis Rockwell, the Sports Director of SouthMiss6 Sports, who has covered over a thousand Pascagoula High games of all types over the past three decades plus.)