JMA girls pull off upset, now Final Four bound

Published 11:17 am Monday, February 24, 2025

The John Milledge girls basketball team played spoiler and kept their season alive Friday.

The seventh-seeded Lady Trojans (12-15) knocked off previously unbeaten No. 2 Terrell Academy (24-1) by a score of 40-37 at Tattnall Square, punching the JMA girls’ ticket to the GIAA Class AAA Final Four for the fifth time in six seasons.

For their efforts, the Lady Trojans have been rewarded with a state semifinal matchup against No. 6 Westminster-Augusta, a team that put up 86 points in its own Elite Eight upset over No. 3 Piedmont. A whopping 61 of the 86 came from one player, junior guard India Williams. JMA and Westminster will square off 3 p.m. Wednesday at Columbus State University.

The John Milledge girls earned their trip there with a gritty performance against a Terrell team that had yet to taste defeat this season.

“I thought out-hustling and outplaying got us the win in this last game,” JMA first-year head coach Jordan Walters said. “Because we were the underdog and weren’t supposed to win, I asked the girls for every ounce of what they had and to leave it all on the court for 32 minutes.”

The Lady Trojans began the game on a good run, but the Terrell Lady Eagles didn’t accumulate a 24-0 record just by showing up at the gym on time. They battled back and actually took a 23-14 lead into halftime.

“Unfortunately trailing at halftime has been the regular for us this season, so it didn’t feel any different,” Walters said at her team’s Sunday shootaround. “We made a couple of adjustments, but I just asked them to play basketball. I thought we were a little stationary in the first half. After that, the girls were reading each other and working with each other well. It clicked for us in the fourth quarter.”

Terrell’s third-quarter lead at one point widened to 12 before the JMA girls kicked into gear. They found their fire again and closed the game out down the stretch. Once the final buzzer sounded, the celebration was on both on the court and off. Players jumped around jubilantly while the Trojan faithful gave them a standing ovation from the bleachers.

Freshman Pierce Moore led all scorers with 18, 10 of which came in the second half with a perfect 6-of-6 performance from the free throw line. A couple of them provided a little more cushion in the game’s closing seconds. Moore began this season coming off the bench, but has been a starter since late January, serving as the team’s scoring catalyst.

Seven Lady Trojans scored Friday. Moore was backed by seven from junior Addie Latimer and six from point guard Kylie Steinmeyer, one of three seniors along with Lucy Elliott and post powerhouse Calah Foston who have helped John Milledge girls basketball once again reach the momentous Final Four milestone.

The team hopes this foray into the semifinals goes better than the previous four as the program has not made the championship round in any of them. The key in this next round is to slow down Westminster’s leading scorer Williams, who averages 32 per contest following her incredible 61-point output in the quarterfinals. No one else on the Lady Wildcats team scores more than five a game on average.

“The plan is to stop [Williams] and see if the other ones are going to be able to beat us,” Walters said. “She’s their motor and go-getter, so we want to shut her down.”

The head coach was asked what else she would like to see from her own team in the upcoming big game.

“I’d love to see us score a little better,” she said. “We improved on free throws (14-of-22 Friday), but we missed too many bunnies (easy shots) in the first half, in my opinion. The effort, energy, heart, and the buy-in these girls have given me, I cannot ask for more. I want it to continue. They’re so locked in and are starting to believe in themselves. Their confidence and fight are what has gotten us to this point.”

That fight has been absolutely necessary in making the current improbable run happen. John Milledge replaced four starters from last season, two of which were 1,000-point scorers. All that production gone, but the Lady Trojans’ fight still remains.