A lot of basketball players are happy to score in double figures for a game. Jonathan Phelps is starting to make double-digit quarters look routine.

Phelps, Vicksburg’s junior shooting guard, scored 16 of his game-high 38 points in the second quarter, then added seven more in a key third-quarter run to lift the Gators to a 63-50 win over Jim Hill in the boys’ championship game of the Warren Central Classic.

It was the third time in the last five games that Phelps has scored at least 35 points. He had 35 in a loss to Forest Hill last week, then scored 40 in a win over Callaway on Friday.

&#8220What can I say? We get him in the open floor and he’s tough to stop,” Vicksburg coach Dellie C. Robinson said. &#8220I can’t say enough about him. The kid’s a scoring machine.”

John Qualls added 10 points and eight rebounds for Vicksburg (6-3), which beat Jim Hill and VHS alum Fred Harris for the second time in 10 days. Harris, Jim Hill’s coach, played at VHS and led the Gators to a state championship in 1980.

Tristan McGowan led Jim Hill (4-5) with 17 points and Cassius Willey scored 12. The Tigers went just 7-for-21 from 3-point range, however, numbers that typically spell defeat for them. Robinson said the Gators made an effort to stop the trey-happy Tigers from getting hot on the perimeter.

&#8220We played a wide 2-3 zone on them and we knew they wanted to shoot threes. You can’t stop them, but we were able to slow them down,” Robinson said.

Phelps finally did slow down late in the game, but he was nearly unstoppable early. His 16-point second quarter turned a 13-12 deficit into a 10-point, 33-23 lead for the Gators at halftime. Vicksburg’s lead would have been larger if not for a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Willey.

Willey’s trey seemed to give Jim Hill a boost. The Tigers started the second half with an 8-0 run to cut it to 33-31 with just over four minutes left in the third quarter.

Then Phelps slammed the door.

He made two layups and a 3-pointer in less than a minute to push the lead back to nine points, 40-31, and the Gators pulled away from there. He scored six more points in the first three minutes of the fourth quarter – and 10 total in the final period – and VHS never led by less than nine down the stretch.

WC 67, Callaway 63.

Mario Luckett scored three of his 22 points in the final 11 seconds of the fourth quarter to give Warren Central a win in the consolation game of the tournament.

Shone Ester poured in 15 points as Warren Central used a 26 point fourth quarter to break a tie at the end of the third.

Casey Brown and Jeremy Smith each scored eight in the win.

(B) St. Al 48, Mercy Cross.

Chase Smith scored 16 points, Chris Johnson added 14 and Marsh Willis had 11 as the St. Aloysius Flashes beat Mercy Cross in the first round of the Catholic Schools Tournament in Gulfport. St. Al (3-2) held Mercy Cross to less than 10 points in every quarter.

St. Al advanced to today’s semifinals against Madison-St. Joe at 3 p.m. The winner will play in the championship game at 7.