The moment Ty White was announced as the new head boys’ basketball coach at Petersburg High School last summer, the rest of Class 3 knew it would require a miracle to beat the Crimson Wave. In Tuesday night’s State Quarterfinals, the Meridian Mustangs couldn’t get one, ending their season with a 102-45 loss.
“We did all we could do,” head coach Jim Smith summed up. “It wasn’t about us tonight. They’re just a really great team.”
There’s no overstating the juggernaut Petersburg is. They have Oklahoma State commit Latrell Allmond, the No. 24 ranked recruit in the nation. They have King Bacot, the No. 1 player in the Class of 2029 and younger brother of former North Carolina star Armando. And they have White, who won seven Class 2 State titles during his time at John Marshall High School.
Meridian, for as impressive as Smith’s program is, does not have those resources. What it does have is a bunch of small-town kids who gave it their all until the bitter end.
Sometimes, sports are about more than wins and losses. Especially at the youth and high school level, they’re about culture. They’re about the growth of boys into young men as they learn how to be part of something bigger than themselves, and they’re about keeping a constant identity of hard work and resilience no matter who comes and goes.
That identity was on display all year at Meridian, a school that lost four 2025 starters to graduation. Will Davis, the lone exception, was joined by returning rotational pieces Marques Myles and Mason Pye, while for everybody else, it was plug-and-play. After 22 games, that next-man-up mentality had taken the Mustangs back to the State playoffs.
They lost in a tough one against Skyline in the Regional Finals last Thursday, setting up their date just south of Richmond. The result wasn’t much of a surprise: the Crimson Wave led 21-11 after a quarter and 49-22 at halftime en route to the 57-point win.
Davis scored 15 points to lead the team in his final high school game, while Lukas Wansley added 10. Meridian’s season comes to a close with a total record of 18-6, and Tuesday’s result takes nothing away from it. The heart the Mustangs showcased throughout the year is to be commended, and everything they achieved was earned the hard way.
“I said at the start of the year that if we end up playing Petersburg, we’ll have had a great year,” Smith told NOVA Legends’ Julian Brown in an interview this week. “Little did I know at the time that we would, and we did.”
Meridian’s boys may have been outmatched against a team like Petersburg, but simply having the opportunity to compete against them was an honor. A few years from now, these kids from a small school in the Little City might very well to get to say they played in a State playoff game against NBA Draft picks.
