COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Wolverines young core grew up this season to lead this program to their first playoffs appearance since the 2018-19 season. Unfortunately, it was a short lived playoffs run. Whitmire(7-16, 6-10 region 1-A) fell 90-16 on the road to C.A. Johnson(20-7, 15-0 region 2-A) on Tuesday, Feb. 17th.
The Hornets entered the first round matchup against the Wolverines with a perfect since the calendar turned over to 2026 and were riding a 12-game win streak. Their last loss came at the hands of T.L. Hanna on December 28, 2025. Whitmire also entered the game on a bit of a hot streak themselves after winning four of their last five games to close out the regular season.
The first quarter and entire first half was a struggle for the Wolverines on both ends of the floor. They scored just three points as a team in the first quarter and only nine points total in the entire first half.
Whitmire found themselves trailing 29-3 at the end of the first quarter. The second quarter wasn’t nice to the visiting team either as they gave up 30 points to the Hornets in the second quarter as they struggled with turnovers.
The Wolverines trailed 59-9 at halftime and would need a miracle to make the game interesting in the second half. Unfortunately, they didn’t get that miracle in the third quarter and couldn’t stop the bleeding. They only allowed 11 points in the quarter, but only score five points as a team.
They trailed 70-14 at the end of three quarters and C.A. Johnson would put the Wolverines out of their misery in the fourth quarter. Whitmire ended the game with 46 turnovers and scored a season low of 16 points in the game.
Despite the early playoffs exit, the young Wolverines grew up this season and now will have another year of growth along with playoff experience entering next season. Also, look for the back court of junior guard Kaden Malpass and freshman guard Braylen Sartor to be much better next season. Sartor led the Wolverines in scoring as a freshman with 9.2 points per game and Malpass averaged 6.7 points per game along 3.3 assists per game.
Congratulations to the Wolverines on a successful season and a huge congratulations to head coach Noah Strong for leading this program in the right direction and rebuilding it back to a playoff contender.
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