MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Only one of the inexperienced state-tournament basketball teams in Thursday's last Class AA boys' quarterfinal looked the part.
None of the players for Tyner nor Stratford had played that deep into a season before, but Stratford's Spartans looked like a team that had been there and done that as they romped to a 78-55 victory.
Stratford (25-6), which had not competed in a state tournament since 2002, plays Fulton (24-8) in a semifinal tonight at 7 EDT.
Tyner (20-11) fell behind 10-0 before scoring with 4:56 to go in the first quarter. Jeremy Elston drove the baseline and passed to Javon Craddock, who made a 3-point goal from the left side.
But it took the Spartans only eight seconds to answer with Jahari Reed's three-point play that started another 10-0 run, and the Rams never were within single digits again.
They got close to it in the second quarter, and that was after Stratford built a 29-5 lead. Beginning with a basket inside by Solomon Bridgeman at 7:02 of the second quarter, the Rams started chipping away at the deficit. By the time Michael Little used a pump fake to free himself and then made a 3-pointer from the right side 1:42 before halftime, Tyner was within 40-29.
However, the Spartans closed the half by scoring seven of the last eight points. Twice in the final minute they kept possession by rebounding a missed free throw after making the first, and Reed scored off an offensive rebound right before the halftime horn.
"We just could not come down with a rebound," Tyner coach E'Jay Ward said. "I've been preaching that all year long. You've got to come down with a rebound. It cost us right before the buzzer."
Adding to Tyner's woes, Stratford began the second half with yet another 10-0 run and went back up by 27.
"Sometimes we get too high with what we're doing," said Stratford coach Romie Reed, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate who played football and basketball for the Mocs in the late 1990s. "We had to calm down a little bit. When the second group comes in, we don't want to see a dropoff. But I'm really proud of our starters. They got back in there and kept us up. They were able to keep hungry and not let it dwindle to a single-digit lead."
Tyner's last real successful stretch was when Javien Elston made three 3-point goals to start the fourth-quarter scoring, prompting Reed to call a timeout. Still, his team was up 65-45.
Every Stratford starter scored in double figures, led by Michael Wallace with 18 points. He also was one of four Spartans with at least six rebounds.
Bridgeman, a junior who scored nine points, was the Rams' leading rebounder with five.
"I was just trying to fight as hard as I could," said Bridgeman, who was at a size disadvantage to a few of the Spartans. "They're really athletic. I tried to box out and get all the rebounds I could. We could've fought harder. We're going to get better."
Craddock, a sophomore, led Tyner with 12 points - all in the first half.
"Their defense was the same," Craddock said of the second half. "My shots just weren't falling."
Marquis Hinton contributed 11 points for the Rams, whose last state appearance was 2014. Reserve Corbin Timmons, like Hinton a junior, played eight minutes but led them with three steals.
"I told my boys that making the decision to come to Tyner wasn't easy," said Ward, a former Brainerd player and assistant coach in his first year as a head coach. "But being around these kids has made things easy. Credit to these seniors. It's been a heck of a run for me. I don't take things like this for granted. I know how hard it is to get up here.
"It's a different feeling sitting down, and now you're standing up. But next year we're expecting to get back up here again."
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.