Vicksburg’s season didn’t end without a fight.

Still, like so many others before, it ended beneath the wheels of the Tupelo juggernaut.

Georgia Russell and Haley Walker scored goals two minutes apart early in the second half, and Tupelo advanced to the state semifinals for the second consecutive season with a 3-0 win over the Missy Gators Monday in the second round of the Class 6A playoffs.

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Soccer Playoffs

Today, 5 p.m.

St. Aloysius girls at

Madison-St. Joseph

Tupelo (19-2) advanced to the North State championship game, where it will host Madison Central today in a rematch of last year’s Class 5A semifinal.

Vicksburg finished its season with a 10-10-3 record and a feeling of accomplishment. The Missy Gators were stunned when longtime coach Kevin Manton resigned in December and was replaced by David Case. After some initial missteps, they regrouped to finish second in Division 4-6A and beat Desoto Central in overtime in the first round of the playoffs.

“We had a real hard time losing our coach, and Coach Case came in and helped us out. We’re a much better team than we were at the beginning of the year,” senior midfielder Melanie McCaskill said.

Case returned the compliment to his players.

“No one felt this team would go as far as they did, and we proved them wrong,” Case said. “It’s a major accomplishment, and you’ve got to give credit to the young ladies. They’re the ones that had to change their stride and they chose to step up their play. They chose to practice in the cold. They really, really came together.”

Monday’s quarterfinal was delayed two days by a winter storm in North Mississippi that made travel dangerous for Tupelo. By gametime, the weather hadn’t improved much. A steady drizzle turned the Memorial Stadium turf into a soggy mess, and a temperature of 40 degrees chilled players and fans alike to the bone.

The muddy field negated some of Tupelo’s speed advantage, while a staunch Vicksburg defense did its best to take even more away.

The Missy Gators kept Tupelo in check most of the way. Only a few spectacular individual efforts broke through to put the Golden Wave in front.

Russell scored in the 15th minute of the first half after weaving around three Vicksburg defenders and juking the last one for a 1-0 lead. She made a similar run in the 13th minute of the second half, meandering from the left side of the field to the right before beating the keeper with a shot into the upper left corner.

The goal quieted a small but rowdy Vicksburg crowd, and Tupelo put the dagger in moments later. Walker took a pass along the left side, made a run similar to Russell’s and scooted her shot low to the left side to make it 3-0 with 25 minutes remaining.

“That’s one of the things we talked about at halftime. We knew the longer we kept it close, the longer their adrenaline would pump and the better they’d play,” Tupelo coach Shelley Miller said. “We knew we had to take them out of it.”

Vicksburg recovered in time to keep the game from turning into a rout, but couldn’t muster enough offense to get back in it. The Missy Gators only recorded one shot on goal the entire game, and even that was accidental. With about 10 minutes left in the first half, a hard-struck pass skipped off the turf and through a group of three players at the 12-yard line. Tupelo keeper Kat Stratton easily scooped it up for her only save.

“That team is very, very fast,” Case said. “They’re fast, and you’ve got to try to prepare for that. When you do that, you cut down some of your offensive weapons. I saw some great combinations, but we couldn’t punch it through their defensive line.”

Contact Ernest Bowker at ebowker@vicksburgpost.com