The Gatlinburg-Pittman Highlanders and the Gibson County Pioneers matched up in a TSSAA Class 2A state tournament quarterfinal at the Charles M. Murphy Athletic Center on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The Gatlinburg-Pittman girls advanced, 60-55. (Photo by Danny Parker)
BY JESSE SMITHEY
MURFREESBORO — By her own admission, Cheyenne Byrd’s role for the Gatlinburg-Pittman girls’ basketball team isn’t always to shoulder the scoring load.
“A lot of games, I score, like, two points — at most,” she quipped.
But there are certain occasions, she added, where she recognizes the need for her offensive output, and so she simply produces.
Like Wednesday.
In a loser-goes-home Class 2A state quarterfinal.
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Byrd buried two fourth-quarter 3s to help Gatlinburg-Pittman rally from a massive second-half deficit and to get past Gibson County for a 60-55 win at the Murphy Center at Middle Tennessee State.
The Lady Highlanders (31-3) trailed 37-21 with 5 minutes, 21 seconds left in the third quarter but quickly forgot their shooting woes and caught fire in the second half.
G-P shot 20 percent before the break but made nine 3s in the second half to help orchestrate a comeback against the Lady Pioneers (25-10).
Addi Wear scored 17 to lead G-P and Chloe Mejias added 14. Maliyah Glasper, who was named Miss Basketball in 2A on Tuesday, scored 10 of her 12 in the second half.
Byrd finished with nine, which all came on made 3s in the second half. She added eight rebounds and four steals.
Gatlinburg-Pittman will face Huntingdon (29-3) in the 2A semifinals at 11 a.m. Central time on Friday.
“It’s not going to get any easier. We’re going to be facing Huntingdon. Another really, really good team,” G-P coach Katie Moore said. “I think, across the board, they’re going to be bigger than us. So we have to make sure we box out and keep them off the board. They have some great shooters, so we’re going to have to find them early on. And I just hope that, defensively, we can make them as uncomfortable as possible and get them out of their game.
“And hopefully, maybe, Friday we’ll shoot better.”
THE DECISIVE FOURTH
After trailing by 10 at half and by as many as 16 in the third quarter, G-P sliced the deficit down to just 46-43 with eight minutes to play.
The Lady Highlanders missed their first eight shots of the fourth and had six point-blank opportunities in the opening 2:13 of the final quarter to close the gap even more but couldn’t get an easy to fall through.
A 3 by Gibson County at the midpoint of the fourth gave the Lady Pioneers a 49-45 lead.
But two offensive rebounds and two successive putback scores by G-P’s Glasper and Caitlin Hamilton (eight points) knotted the score at 49-all.
Byrd’s 3 from the corner with 2:20 remaining gave G-P a 52-51 lead — its first since a Chloe Mejias 3 made it 3-2 Lady Highlanders halfway through the first quarter.
Byrd couldn’t miss late, and she hit another 3 from the opposite corner for a 55-51 lead with 1:40 left.
Ahead 55-53 with 53 seconds left, Wear went to the foul line and sank both to make for a four-point lead. Gibson County double-dribbled on the opposite end to help G-P’s cause even more.
“Not for a second did I think we were going to lose that game,” Glasper said.
“In our past games, Cheyenne’s always been the one who hit those clutch 3s,” Glasper added. “So I just knew she was going to hit them.”
THE ROUGH FIRST HALF
The Lady Highlanders encountered unwelcoming rims on their end of the Murphy Center floor in the first quarter, missing their first four shots and ultimately producing a 1-for-15 shooting clip in the first eight minutes.
Mejias’ 3-pointer proved to be the only make for G-P in that time frame, giving G-P a 3-2 lead midway through the first quarter. But Gibson County took a 15-3 lead into the second quarter.
G-P only had one turnover in the first eight minutes, so the problem wasn’t ball security — just shooting.
And the shooting didn’t improve quickly.
Gibson County built a 20-7 lead midway through the second, as G-P was 2-for-21 shooting at that point.
The Lady Highlanders trailed just 26-16 at halftime — thanks to Mejias.
She scored 14 points on 5-for-10 shooting, including 2 of 3 from 3, to keep G-P in it.
The rest of the Lady Highlanders went 1 for 20 before the break. Glasper accounted for a 1-for-8 shooting performance in the first 16 minutes, getting her lone first-half bucket off an inbounds play at the 4:05 mark of the second quarter.
THE COMEBACK
Gatlinburg-Pittman’s collective shot warmed up after the half, as the Lady Highlanders popped in seven 3s in the third.
Glasper’s transition 3 early in the third quarter cut Gibson County’s lead to 31-21, but the Lady Pioneers answered right back with a corner 3 on their end to bump the lead back to a more comfortable 13. They added another corner 3 with 5:12 remaining in the third to build their biggest lead thus far — 37-21.
Hamilton’s 3 for G-P with just under 3 minutes remaining in the third trimmed Gibson County’s advantage down again to 10 points (43-33). The Lady Highlanders shot 60 percent (6 of 10) in the first 5:06 of the second half.
Wear’s mid-range jumper at the 2:07 mark of the third cut the deficit to eight (43-35). And Byrd swished a corner 3 some 30 seconds later to cut Gibson County’s lead to 43-38.
Glasper sank a top-of-the-key 3 to make it a 44-41 ballgame with 1:06 remaining in the third and added a steal-and-score just before the end-of-quarter buzzer.
Gibson County led 46-43 heading into the fourth, but G-P shot 55.6 percent in the first eight minutes of the second half to get competitive.
By game’s end, Gibson County had 18 turnovers to G-P’s six. The Lady Highlanders scored 21 points off GC turnovers.
“We knew we probably couldn’t shoot as bad … as we did in the first half,” Moore said. “I just kept telling them: ‘Rely on your defense. As long as we can keep coming up with stops, eventually our shots will start falling.'”
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