Bishop McGuinness wins 11th girls state basketball championship

With the win, McGuinness (28-4) is 11-0 in NCHSAA state championship appearances, all under coach Brian Robinson, since moving to the association for the 2005-06 season. It won a record nine straight from 2006-2014, before earning the 2022 title, 70-42 over Bertie.

“They were so focused last year trying to win that one, and they did it,” Robinson said. “I knew the challenge was going to be win the second one. It’s hard to do that and for them to be as mature as they were, asking teenagers to be mature the whole season is hard, and to their credit, they understood the big picture of it.”

The championships have been rotated for particular classifications between this venue and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Dean E. Smith Center, but the association made the decision to hold Classes 2A and 4A finals at UNC’s larger capacity arena against the traditional cycle to accommodate crowd size. The NC State arena holds 5,000 compared to UNC’s 21,750.

As a result, this marked the first time that McGuinness has won an NCHSAA title at the same venue in back-to-back seasons. This was accomplished with all of Robinson’s starters returning from the 2022 title team.

It marked the 19th time McGuinness won a game this season by 30-plus points. This was the third largest margin of victory in its 11 state titles.

McGuinness sophomore Adelaide Jernigan earned Kay Yow MVP honors, after finishing with a game-high 21 points, despite exiting the game with 7:06 left with the score 63-29. The Northwest Piedmont 1A Conference Player of the Year scored 14 in the first half.

Chatham Charter (26-6) made its first state finals appearance, after not having previously advanced past the third round in program history.

In a seesaw first quarter, seven lead changes occurred, but McGuinness gained a 16-12 lead late in the period. In that quarter, 2002 finals MVP Charley Chappell, this year’s West Most Outstanding Player, had two of her four total steals and played the primary role in holding Knights top scorer Tamaya Walden to 1-for-6 shooting from the field for two points during the period.

In the second quarter, Walden went 0-for-3 and didn’t score, as Chappell and other defenders restricted the 2022 Central Tar Heel Co-Conference Player of the Year.

“We spent the whole week working on help defense from the weak side and so we were not going to let her drive right and not have any help from the back side of it,” Robinson said. “So Charley knew, when she let her go a little bit, that we had people there, so Charley could be a little more aggressive. ...”

Walden entered the game averaging 23.1 points per game on just under 49 percent field goal shooting, but was 2-for-15 Saturday for 11 points, with 6 coming in the fourth quarter.

“The last two or three days of practice, we talked about everything that they were going to do,” Knights coach Jeffrey Patterson said. “They were going to full-court press us man to man, they were going to run that 1-3-1 half-court trap. We went over all of that, but we just didn’t execute on our end.”

After taking a 14-12 lead, McGuinness stayed in front the rest of the way.

Chatham Charter junior forward Meah Brooks earned East Most Outstanding Player for the losing side, scoring a team-high 18 points.

The East No. 3 seed Knights reached the finals after defeating No. 30 Pamlico County 65-25, No. 14 Roxboro Community 58-39 and No. 6 Vance Charter 64-27 to make its first appearance in the regional rounds. It won 70-53 over No. 7 Southside and 56-51 over No. 1 Falls Lake to win the eastern regional finals.

The West No. 2 seed McGuinness made its way to the game with by defeating No. 31 Hayesville 54-15, No. 18 North Stokes 54-14 and No. 7 Bessemer City 62-55 in the sectionals. Then, the Lady Villains won its regional semifinal 56-42 over Cherokee, a home game played at Southwest Guilford, after the Lady Braves petitioned to the Association for a venue with larger capacity.

In its 41-30 western regional final victory at Morganton Freedom, it held No. 13 Robbinsville to a season low in team scoring.

Prior to the game Lillian Jones and Katie Deal were given Sportsmanship Awards for Chatham Charter and McGuinness respectively.