Irmo boys on to another state championship basketball game after redemption win

Leading into Friday’s Lower State championship game, Tim Whipple didn’t talk about what happened on this stage last year.

But that didn’t stop Jonathan White, one of his Irmo boys basketball starters, from remembering just how bad it felt to leave empty-handed last year — two games short of the Yellow Jackets’ ultimate goal — with a loss in the state semifinals.

Now he can forget.

Class 4A Player of the Year Brandon Crawford was lights out with 14 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks and three more players, including White, scored in double digits as the Yellow Jackets cruised past Hartsville, 56-36, in Friday’s Lower State championship at the Florence Center.

With the win, top-seeded Irmo advances to its 11th state championship game under coach Tim Whipple and first since 2018. Irmo will play Lancaster — which beat Greenville 58-48 in Friday’s Upper State championship — on Thursday at 7 p.m. at USC Aiken.

But for now, the Yellow Jackets can celebrate a redemptive win that has them four quarters away from their first state championship since 2013 — and had a much better postgame atmosphere than last year’s state semifinal loss to AC Flora. And the locker room?

White grinned.

“It was lit,” he said.

Added Whipple: “It’s special every single time. … Even though I’ve been there before, these guys haven’t been there before. It’s special to them, and I’m so happy for them, that their hard work, their dedication down the line has given them an opportunity to be able to play in that (state championship) game.”

Consider it a proper celebration for a result that was never really in doubt. Hartsville entered Friday as a fun underdog, a No. 11 seed that knocked off defending state champion Wilson on the road to get here and sank a lot of 3-pointers in the process.

But Irmo was the No. 1 seed in the Lower State bracket and the No. 6 team in the SCBCA’s final coaches poll of the season for a reason. Whipple’s squad won its first three playoff games against North Myrtle Beach, West Florence and Lucky Beckham by 45, 24 and 25 points, respectively.

After some early positioning, this one wasn’t much different.

Irmo led 13-7 after the first quarter, 30-18 at halftime and 44-28 after three quarters, leaning a fearsome defensive effort out of its 2-3 zone — 12 blocks, 10 steals — and allowing that to fuel an offense that ultimately shot 48 percent from the field to Hartsville’s 29 percent.

Crawford, Irmo’s star 6-foot-9 senior center who recently picked up a Gardner-Webb offer, continued his run of dominance by blocking six shots, altering many more and finishing the game off with a dunk over two Hartsville defenders.

It wasn’t Crawford’s best scoring night, Whipple said, but it didn’t matter. Senior guard White, junior guard Madden Collins and senior guard Te’Andre Summons chipped in 11 points apiece to provide the Yellow Jackets with a timely boost from the backcourt.

Collins also had a team-high five assists on a night where Irmo recorded assists on 14 of its 25 made field goals. Hartsville’s most compelling stretches of play came midway through the second quarter (within 17-14) and early in the fourth quarter (within 44-30).

It was never enough. Irmo’s Lower State title sets the Yellow Jackets on a collision course with Lancaster on Thursday with a state championship — Whipple’s sixth, with five previous in 1991, 1994, 1995, 2011 and 2013 — on the line. White, for one, can’t wait.

“I’m super excited,” he said. “Super excited.”

Irmo: Brandon Crawford 14, Madden Collins 11, Te’Andre Summons 11, Jonathan White 11, AJ Brand 7, Mason Collins 2. H: Foman 4, Xavion Robinson 14, Brown 2, Crawley 3, Deandre Huggins 15.