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EspañolGreenville senior guard Keshun McCoy emerged as a scorer in the boys basketball playoffs and had a career-best 17 points in the quarterfinals.
That was not his job in the Class 5A Division 2 Upper State championship.
McCoy’s focus on Feb. 27 was on defense, and that’s how he helped Greenville beat Riverside, 55-47, in the state semifinals game at Wofford.
His job was to make life as difficult as possible for Riverside’s high-flying senior all-state star, Sebi Boyogueno, who averages 28.0 points per game and was coming off a 38-point performance.
McCoy and the Red Raiders held Boyogueno to one basket in the first half, a put-back rebound off a teammate's miss, to build an 11-point lead they never looked back.
Greenville (23-6) will play for a second straight championship 8 p.m. March 5 against Westwood (25-3) at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia.
“Early in the game, Keshun McCoy did an amazing job of defending Sebi,” Greenville coach Yerrick Stoneman said. “Amazing job.”
Boyogueno finished with 18 points but was held scoreless in the last five minutes after the Riverside (25-4) had briefly cut the lead to 46-45. The fourth quarter had to be stopped twice because of blood on his jersey. It was that kind of night.
"My teammates wanted me to stop him, and they helped whenever I needed it," McCoy said. "They kept me motivated throughout the game. Defense is energy and they were giving me a lot."
Boyogueno had only one field goal attempt in the first quarter, and that was a 3-pointer.
“We wanted to make him a facilitator,” said Greenville all-state senior Caden Coleman, who had 13 points and seven rebounds.
Nobody else from Riverside could get good looks, either. Boyogueno’s tip-in midway through the second quarter as just the third basket of the game for the Warriors.
“We knew Sebi would try to get downhill,” Stoneman said. “We needed to switch on every handoff. We were switching on everything. We knew Sebi would try to go downhill. We wanted to force him to go certain ways. If we could hold him at bay, we would have a good chance.”
Todd Shanesy covers high school athletics for the Greenville News, Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Anderson Independent Mail in the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, at @ToddShanesySHJ.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Greenville boys basketball beats Riverside in SCHSL 5A semifinals