MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - A disastrous third quarter put McMinn Central in too deep a hole to climb out of, and the Chargerettes fell 76-54 to Upperman in the semifinals of the girls' Class AA state basketball tournament Friday evening.
After trailing by four points at halftime, the Chargerettes were outscored 26-14 in the third quarter.
"I thought from the get-go we were not in the game mentally," said McMinn Central coach Johnny Morgan. "It wasn't a matter of us losing focus. We never had it from the beginning. There were too many breakdowns and we just didn't execute as well as they did, and that's from the coaches on down."
The Chargerettes (31-3), who were last year's state runners-up, had won 20 straight games, all but two of those by double digits. But after trailing for all but 18 seconds of the first 10 minutes of the game, Upperman took the lead for good on a 3-pointer from Sarah Eldridge with 2:07 to go before halftime.
The Lady Bees then opened the second half with a 10-2 run, taking a commanding lead that never dipped below eight the rest of the way.
"Coach called timeout to try and settle us down, but it was in our heads," said Chargerettes junior Jacobi Lynn. "When it started getting away I felt like I had to do something to get us back in it, but I couldn't. It was heartbreaking."
Lynn, a Miss Basketball finalist, led the Chargerettes with 22 points and five rebounds.
"Any time you have a great player like her, the others tend to lean on her, and they got away from their roles and lost focus," Morgan said. "I think panic set in when they started to get going in the second half and we tried to come back and stop the bleeding all at once instead of just keeping our composure. We started taking shots we shouldn't take and missing them, and they would come back and make theirs."
The Lady Bees (35-2) connected on 64 percent of their second-half shots, while McMinn Central shot just 29 percent from the floor in the final half - and was 1-of-9 on 3-point attempts. Upperman sophomore point guard Akira Levy also had 22 points, making 8 of 13 shots, to go with seven rebounds and four assists.
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHargis.