By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director
JACKSON — St. Stanislaus is back in the prep basketball state championship game for just the third time in program history.
And, Saturday afternoon, the Rock-A-Chaws hope that the latest trip is more like the last one was than the first time.
St. Stanislaus meets Quitman for all the marbles in Class 3A here at the Mississippi Coliseum at 4 p.m., as yet another campaign winds down. The Rocks stand an impressive 30-4 overall coming into the title tilt, while the Panthers are 26-6.
Fifteen years ago, to end the 2011 season, current SSC head coach Daniel Grieves helped lead his Rocks to a 54-38 win over neighboring foe Pass Christian. The season before, Grieves and his SSC squad fell to city rival Bay High 51-39 in the battle for the Gold Ball.

“It’s amazing to get back to this point because I played here, and now I’m the coach and our coaches are Stanislaus guys and our players are Stanislaus guys.” Grieves said. “We’ve all been a part of this school and this program.”
In fact his father, Danny Grieves was an assistant coach back on those two teams and is back at SSC this season as an assistant for his son.
The younger Grieves has led the Rocks to consecutive Region 8-3A titles for the first time since 2002-2003. Another assistant coach is Ramon Graves, who played with Daniel Grieves on that 2011 squad.
In fact, Grieves remains the program’s all-time leading scorer with 2,443 points and was the only player in school history to record 2,000+ points, 500+ rebounds, 300+ assists, and 100+ steals, while playing under head coach Jay Ladner, now the head men’s basketball coach at Southern Miss.
“When we took over five years ago, and they’d only won two games the year before,” Daniel Grieves added.”It’s been step-by-step, trying to generate interest in the program. We were losing games, but we weren’t losers. We were trying to do things the right way, year-after-year. I told them that if you take care of what you’re supposed to on the life side, the basketball will take care of itself.”

On it’s way to the title tilt, St. Stanislaus dethroned four time state champ Booneville Wednesday night 49-41. St. Stanislaus never trailed in the game.
Junior point guard Rafael Cohen led SSC with 16 points, while Alan Gilliam added 12 points and senior Dandy Dozen center Max Baria chipped in 10 points.
“We’ve spent the entire year banking on full court pressure and relentless pressure, great attitudes, and effort. If we can do that, we will give ourselves a chance,” Grieves continued. “We talk about it all the time, it’s not about wins and losses it’s about playing for each other, sacrificing and trying to help each other out. Rafael did what he’s been doing at all year with Max drawing a lot of attention and knows the game well, so it was good to see them play with a lot of fire and energy.”

Meanwhile, Quitman thumped Thomas Edwards 66-42 Wedenesday in the other Class 3A Final Four semifinal game.
Cadarius Buxton scored 14 points for the Panthers, while Semaj McKenzie added 10 points for Quitman.

This is just the second ever trip to the state finals for the Panthers, with the other coming in 2015. Quitman has never won a state title.