Unbelievable comeback – Arrows repeat as Class 6A champs

By Danny C. Davis

The Clinton Arrow boys basketball team had won five state championships in history – 1955 and 1960 in the old AAA classification, more recently in 1993 in Class 5A, and then last year (2021) in Class 6A. All season long, the team had talked about making history with a repeat of the MHSAA Class 6A title for 2022.

On Saturday night, March 4, at the Mississippi Coliseum in the Class 6A Basketball state championship title game against Olive Branch, for the first three and a half quarters, it looked as though the Arrows would not come close to that goal. Clinton found itself in a deep hole early, trailing 8-1 in the first two-and-a-half minutes of the game. The Arrows trailed by ten points, 21-11, at the end of the first quarter. The deficit increased to 40-27 at halftime and 61-47 at the start of the 4th period.

With just 4:51 left, the deficit had increased to fifteen points, 69-54, and that is when Clinton went on an unbelievable 22-6 run in the time remaining.

Junior Tyler Nichols’ 3-point shot brought Clinton within four points, 73-69, with 1:53 remaining. Senior point guard Jaylon Davis’ shot made it 73-70 at the 1:12 mark. Olive Branch nailed a 2-pointer at the one-minute mark to make it 75-70 with a minute left, but then it was all Clinton the final sixty seconds.

Mississippi State-signee Kimani Hamilton, a 6’ 8” senior, hit a 2-pointer with thirty seconds left, to make it 75-74. And then Davis was the hero, drawing a foul with five seconds left, and went to the free throw line and sank two shots to give Clinton its first lead of the game, 76-75. Olive Branch missed a long shot that bounced off the goal at the buzzer and gave the Arrows their back-to-back MHSAA Class 6A championship titles.

Clinton won its 18th game in a row to finish the season 23-5 after a slow start. CHS stood 5-5 on December 10 after a loss to Meridian. After that, the Arrows never lost again.
Back-to-back championships was a first in history for the school’s basketball program.

“As long as there was time on the clock, I felt like we had a chance to win,” said Arrow first-year head coach Leonard Taylor, a 1999 Clinton High graduate. “This is special; this is my alma mater, Clinton High School. I am so proud of this team. I would go to war with every one of them. We had to fight back those last few minutes, and we played some real good defense and made some big shots and won another championship for the city of Clinton.”

“We changed to a 1-2-2 half court press on defense at halftime and were able to slow them down,” said Taylor.

“We had to make a play at the end, and I passed it to Jaylon [Davis]; he made the play, got fouled and made two free throws – made both of them and won the game for us,” said Hamilton, who led the Arrows with 24 total points and was named the championship game’s most valuable player.

“Coach [Taylor] called that last time out and told us that we were not out of the game – and that it was a mental thing to play hard go out there win it; and that is what we did,” said Hamilton. “We had been there before coming back down 13 against Brandon in the semi-finals with just four minutes left. It was just crazy the way we won these last two games down so many points in the last few minutes. We just wanted to make history for Clinton High basketball with back-to-back championships, and that is what we did.”

“We came out a little slow,” said Davis, a 6‘2” senior point guard who scored 12 points, including four free throws. “When I went to the line to shoot those last two shots, I just had to calm down, take a deep breath and knock them out for our team to help us win.”

Senior Alan Hughes, a 6’3” senior point guard, agreed.

“We knew we had to come out of the locker room after halftime and fight our way back into the game and find a way at the end to win it. We fought through a lot of adversity all the way to the last play and found a way to win a championship again.”