Whenever a team plays sound, fundamental basketball, the game generally tends to lean in its favor.

Vicksburg’s girls grabbed 47 total rebounds, dished out 10 assists and stole the ball eight times in a 52-36 win against Pearl on Friday night.

The Missy Gators went into halftime with a 27-19 lead, but took a while to get some traction. They started the game with a three-minute scoring drought before Micha Williams broke the run. Karry Callahan followed Williams’ shot with a layup and found Keiyana Gaskin down low to tie and ignite a 14-3 run to end the first quarter.

From there, the game belonged to the Missy Gators as they outscored Pearl in all four quarters.

“I think we did pretty good. We were a little nervous in the beginning,” Williams said. “We just settled down, took a deep breath and started playing as a team together and started moving the ball around.”

It was a balanced effort from the Missy Gators.

Williams finished with 12 points, five rebounds and a steal. Keiyana Gaskin also added 12 points and seven rebounds.

Callahan added another double-double to her season with 17 points, 18 rebounds, seven assists, five steals and four blocks.

The Missy Gators went 4-of-24 from the free-throw line.

(B) Vicksburg 53, Pearl 51

The Gators edged out the Pirates on a last-second layup attempt. Kenneth Murphy, who scored 12 points on the night, was trapped along the baseline and found Raheam Moore. Moore kicked it out to Dentarius Richardson, who then found Joe Thomas for the score with 3.5 seconds left.

But the play before where Kardell English put the team up by two with less than two minutes remaining is what coach Dellie Robinson said put them in position to win the game. Pearl tied the game at 51 after English’s basket, then the Gators ran the clock down before Thomas hit the game-winner.

“We had a good backdoor cut, we’ve been working on that for the past couple of days,” Robinson said. “We’ve been working on last-second situations and we definitely needed it. We were able to score and get the lead back and didn’t give it up.”

Moore finished with 12 points and Thomas added another seven in big moments.

Pearl’s defensive rotation and hedging off the ballhandler coming off screens led to some early turnovers and mishaps for the Gators to begin the second half. Vicksburg forced and missed three 3-pointers to start.

Robinson called Pearl’s Brandon Boston a thorn in his side for the past three seasons. Robinson said the only way he could contain Boston was to put a defender in front and behind him and hope he missed.

Boston kept his team in the game by scoring all 15 of his points in the second half. He was able to put the ball on the floor for a euro-step layup, convert on a floater or shoot the midrange jumper.

“It’s a great win for us,” Robinson said. “For this team to win without (injured forward Kirk Parker) is huge for us.”