COLUMBIA — When the season began, the Whale Branch boys basketball team was virtually unknown across the state. Sure, the Warriors had a big-time recruit in Nick Pringle, who was headed to Wofford, but they didn’t even crack the preseason top 10 in Class 2A.
When the season ended Friday night at Colonial Life Arena, the Warriors had flirted with toppling a dynasty.
Whale Branch’s dream season ended with a 53-39 loss Friday in the Class 2A championship game, as Gray Collegiate held off the Warriors’ challenge to claim a third consecutive state title.
“We were here. We had a chance,” Whale Branch coach Jim Raymond said. “We put ourselves in position, just the ball wouldn’t bounce one way, couldn’t get a call another. Just couldn’t finish the deal. The guys played about as well as I could ask them to play.
“It was fun for a while.”
Indeed it was.
The Warriors had been plagued by sluggish starts throughout the playoffs, but they charged out of the gate Friday. After an initial turnover led to the War Eagles going the foul line, Whale Branch rattled off nine straight points to take a 9-1 lead.
Gray weathered the storm, though, and outscored the Warriors 16-2 over the remainder of the first quarter. When Pringle went to the bench after his second foul with 3:27 left, Gray’s Chase McDuffie took over, scoring nine of his game-high 22 points in the first quarter.
Chisolm stopped the bleeding with five quick points to start the second quarter, and a Shemar Williams bucket pulled the Warriors within 19-18 before Chisolm picked up his third foul with 3:15 left in the half.
Still, the Warriors went toe-to-toe with the two-time defending state champs, and consecutive buckets from Pringle — including a thunderous follow jam off a missed jumper — pulled Whale Branch even until a costly Warriors turnover led to a transition bucket that put Gray up 24-22 at halftime.
The teams traded baskets early in the third quarter, but when Pringle picked up his third foul with 4:07 left in the period, the War Eagles took advantage. With Pringle unable to patrol the paint, McDuffie went back to work, first driving the lane and then draining a 3-pointer from the corner to help Gray stretch the margin to 39-31 after three quarters.
Any hope of a comeback evaporated in the early minutes of the fourth quarter, when Pringle was whistled for his fourth and fifth fouls in a span of 85 seconds, ending his outstanding high school career with a painful walk to the bench with 5:44 left in the title game.
Pringle finished with 11 points, six rebounds, and three blocks, while Chisolm had a team-high 13 points. They both shed tears as they joined Raymond to collect the runner-up trophy.
“The thing is, they have so much invested,” Raymond said. “And when you get invested and it doesn’t go the way you want, it should hurt. And it does hurt for those guys. I mean they battled and gave as much as they could. They did it all season.”
In the process, they rallied a community. Five charter buses of fans made the trip to Columbia on Friday, and all of Seabrook spent the week celebrating the Warriors’ trip to the big stage as the culmination of a season that won’t soon fade from their memories.
“We were able to have all these home games, and the gym was packed and it was going crazy,” Raymond said. “People were excited about Whale Branch basketball, and these guys competed with the hearts of warriors.”
Story and photos by Justin Jarrett
