At the start of the season, Coach Darren Coffey hung a picture of a championship ring on the wall of the Wildcats locker room as motivation for the team to make a push towards the 1A title. Midway through the season he felt the team had taken their eye off the prize prompting him to take "his dream" off the wall.

"I went in the locker room after the game and took the rings off the wall and told them they were my dream and I was going to take it with me if they didn't want it," Coffey said.

The next day his cell phone gave him a buzz of hope in the form of a text from senior Dylan Turner telling his coach that he still wanted the dream.

"Dylan brought a lot of hope to us this season and brought a change to the season," Coffey said. "He got things turned around for us and the rest of the guys got on board with him."

That newfound hope paved the road to Jackson, but the dream came up a game short as the Myrtle Hawks defeated the Cats 61-52 in the semi-final round of the Class 1A tournament.

Myrtle (26-12) saw the Cats (22-14) battle back to take a 47-43 lead early in the fourth quarter, but after a fiery timeout by Coach Jonathan Ashley the Hawks held Calhoun City to two field goals for the remaining six minutes of the contest.

"I think we started playing better help-defense in the third quarter, but we couldn't execute down the stretch or find the basket in the fourth. We shot ourselves in the foot early in the fourth quarter because we had a lot of high percentage shots we couldn't connect on," Coffey said.

Calhoun City had their chances in the second half, but turnovers late in the game would ultimately do in the Cats.

"We really hurt ourselves with turnovers and not getting back in transition defense," Coffey said.

The breaking point came midway through the final frame with City trailing by two points when Brandon Lawrence appeared to get the ball back for the Cats when the official signaled a jump-ball, but changed the official call to a foul sending the senior to the bench with his fifth foul.

"That was the major turning point in the game because Brandon was playing really hard and the rest of the guys were feeding off of him," Coffey said. "It was judgment call and I thought he called it a jump-ball, but Brandon must of done something to make him mad for him to turn around and call it a foul. It broke our morale when he fouled out."

Myrtle went on to hit 14-of-18 from the free throw line in the final four minutes of the contest to pick up the nine-point victory.

Charlie Easley led with 9, Lawrence 8, Ricky Whaley 8, J.R. Jennings 6, Taborris Coffey 6, Dominique Cook 5, Demarius Howard 5, Turner 4, and Dartavion Primer scored 1 point for the Cats.

David Wilson led Myrtle with 15 points while three other Hawks scored in double digits to advance to the 1A championship game against Coldwater on Thursday.