Rock Hill rules! Bearcats win first girls basketball state championship
Rock Hill’s special season ended like the team dreamed it would.
The Bearcats (26-3), the top-ranked team in South Carolina 5A girls basketball that hadn’t lost since early December, defeated Summerville 52-44 in the USC Aiken Convocation Center on Thursday night.
The win delivered the Rock Hill program its first state championship.
“They were still kind of coming back, chipping away,” senior guard Gracie Wilson told The Herald with an excited laugh when asked when the win felt real, “and then in the final seconds, her (Jada Jones) eyes got so big. And I just looked at her and realized the time was gone.”
Senior guard Jada Jones chimed in: “I remember during practice, we practiced throwing the ball up at the end.”
They did that, the seniors said, because they wanted to visualize winning it all — to enact it into existence.
And the game ended the way the Bearcats wanted it to: With a few seconds left, Jones was dribbling in circles near mid-court, evading Summerville defenders. She then tossed the ball up as high as she could before the entire team started jumping up and yelling at half-court.
Players shared hugs. Some seniors shed tears.
Head coach Kenny Orr got emotional, too.
“Hopefully,” Orr said with a big smile, “we cemented our legacy.”
How Rock Hill beat Summerville
Rock Hill is one of the best 3-point shooting teams in South Carolina. And the group didn’t shy away from Thursday’s opportunity.
The Bearcats scored their first 12 points on 3s — two from junior guard Laila Hankerson and two from freshman guard Alyssa Hankerson. That shooting display helped them jump out to an 18-13 lead after the first quarter and sent a message that appeared to shape the rest of the game.
“Venues like this, portable goals, a different kind of backdrop, it did worry me,” Orr said. “But then we came out. We hit some. And then I was like, ‘All right, we have our (bearings).’ So we were pretty good.”
The threat of Rock Hill’s shooting prowess opened up opportunities elsewhere. Jada Jones got going because of it. The senior guard finished the first half leading the team in rebounds (five), assists (three) and points (eight) — and that included a steal and fastbreak layup at the end of the first half.
The Bearcats led 29-20 heading into the break.
“We’ve known we are small all season,” Jones said, when asked if she knew she was going to have to do a little bit of everything on Thursday night. “Each player steps up to do what they have to do to get the win, whether it’s rebounding, passing the ball, defense. So I was just doing what I had to do to make sure we got the win.”
Summerville put together a few runs in the second half, leveraging its size advantage to get offensive rebounds and second-chance points. The Green Wave even forced a few turnovers, beating the Bearcats at their own, full-court-press game.
But every time the momentum seemed to shift, Rock Hill responded. That response would come thanks to a Jones steal and score, or a Laila Hankerson bucket, or a Makayla Street hustle play.
On one of the game’s most crucial moments in the fourth quarter, with Summerville on a 7-0 run, Jones drove right and found senior guard Gracie Wilson in the corner. Wilson then pump-faked, made a step-back move and let go a high-arching 3.
Bucket. That made the score 47-35 with just over four minutes to play in the game.
The Bearcat crowd roared a sigh of relief.
Wilson did, too.
“Well they were in man, so I was just going to attack the basket, finish if I can,” Jones said, recounting the pivotal play. “And if they pinch in, pass it out to my shooter. And Gracie finished.”
Wilson added: “I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before.”
She laughed. “For me personally, I wasn’t hitting my shots in the first half. And in the second half I was starting to get a bit more confidence. I was hitting my shots. And we were going through a rough patch, and I just remember Jada driving the ball, kicking it to me.”
She then shrugged. “I was like, ‘We gotta score.’ And I was feeling it, so I let it go.”
Orr remembers the pivotal play, too.
“We were trying to go into our spread set to get an open look for a 3,” Orr said. “And you gotta remember, a couple plays earlier, we did the exact same thing and Alyssa Hankerson hit a 3. And they had just cut the lead again.
“So at that point in time, they had got it down to about nine, and then when Jada found Gracie for that 3, that was big.”
After that shot, Rock Hill maintained its lead and forced Summerville to foul. And while the Bearcats were not perfect from the free-throw line in the fourth quarter — they finished just 4-of-10 from the line on the game — they were good enough.
How Rock Hill got to Thursday
Rock Hill was a state-championship contender before the 2021-22 season began — even if the team itself didn’t realize it.
The Bearcats, after a heartbreaking loss to Clover in last year’s Upper State championship game, were ranked as the 2021-22 preseason No. 2 team in South Carolina 5A girls basketball. And that ranking made sense. Rock Hill was returning a lot of key players in 2021-22, and people had an idea as to what to expect from them: adept shooting, athleticism, roster depth and more.
And the Bearcats lived up to that billing once the season began.
After losing three games in a row in late-November/early December — to statewide powerhouses Lower Richland, Keenan and Camden — the Bearcats ripped off 16 consecutive wins to end the regular season and earned their second Region 4-5A championship in a row in the process.
They used that end-of-regular-season momentum to carry them through the playoffs. They dominated Nation Ford. They beat Woodmont by seven — one of only three single-digit wins the Bearcats notched all year — and they beat JL Mann and Mauldin by 20-plus points each.
That all led them to a chance at the 5A throne on Thursday.
“We’ve been having that bulls-eye on our back since the first part of the season,” Orr said. “We lost to those three (early in the season), and everybody wrote us off. And then we started winning again, and everybody just had things they wanted to say. Our kids paid attention to it. I paid attention to it.
“But they just kept trucking along. This is just so gratifying.”
Final stats, key players
▪ The Bearcats ended shooting 39.6% from the field and 50% (10 of 20) from 3. That was overwhelmingly better than Summerville’s 33.3% from the field and 26.7% from 3.
▪ The Bearcats had five players score, four of whom finished in double figures: Laila Hankerson notched 13 points, Jada Jones and Gracie Wilson finished with 12, and Alyssa Hankerson had 11. Makayla Street finished with four.
▪ Jones finished with a double-double (12 points and 10 rebounds), and she even added a game-high six assists. Street finished second on the team in rebounds with eight.
▪ Summerville was led by 6-foot forward Jasmine Grant, who finished with 16 points and 14 rebounds, and Ya’Niah Smith, who finished with 12. Terrinigue Polite finished with three points and 10 rebounds.
This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 6:32 PM.
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