South Starts Season

Twin Valley South’s girls basketball team began their season this weekend by playing in the CCC/SWBL Tip Off that was hosted at Northridge this season.  This season’s edition of the Panthers has more players than last year, but is still lacking in Varsity experience – and height. The team will need to be scrappy and aggressive on defense to be successful this season.

And that was the way that the team started on Friday night.  They pressed the host Polar Bears and used an attacking defense to gain an early advantage that lasted to half time.  But the third quarter was all Northridge as they outscored the Panthers and gained a lead that would not be relinquished. What had been a narrow 2 point lead at half time was turned into a deficit as South would fall 41-25. Freshman Milan Crews lead scoring for the Panthers with 9 points, Abbey Creech scored 7, Jayce Fisher 5, and Hailey Keener had 3.

Carlisle was clearly the best team in the tip off and they were next up for the Panthers. South tried to start out the same way against the Indians – a full court press and a man to man defense in the half court.  But Carlisle could not be contained so South then settled into a zone defense for the remainder of the night.  But South’s lack of height showed as Carlisle was getting 2 and 3 shot attempts on their possessions while South would only get 1 attempt.  South was also cold from the foul line – missing their first 5 attempts.  Although they would not have made a difference this time, those are lost points that can make a difference in a close game.

South scoring against Carlisle: Creech 7, Keener 8, Morgan Newhart 4.

Coach Mabry – against Northridge: “We played well early, we were up 8-zip.  We came out pressing, got on them early, and caught them by surprise.  Which is something we need to do – we have some quickness on the team and we need to utilize it.  Now we are inexperienced and we tend to get out of control with that quickness.  But as long as we are being aggressive, I don’t have a problem with it.”

He continued, “But our biggest thing right now is our shooting and our passing. I think we can get to where we need to be – it might take awhile. We mixed together some people that played last year with some people that came out this year and it will take a little bit for them to gel as a team.  Even with some juniors and a couple of seniors on the team – not much varsity experience."

The Carlisle game: “Defensively we tried to do a couple of things tonight that we hadn’t worked on in practice – this early in the season we need to find what we can do.  And I will give them credit, I can call a time out and diagram something and they will go out and execute it.  Which with some teams in the past we couldn’t do.  It is rare for a young team to be able to just sit and listen, then go out and do what I ask."

Finally, “There is a lot more to do, we are always going to be challenged to do defensive rebounding.  We can take the ball to the hole – we are aggressive with our quickness. But that quickness has to translate to rebounds at the other end. Rebounding is based on awareness – you can’t just stand around and wait for the ball to come to you. And we need to get better with our shooting.  We got some good looks, but just couldn’t knock down our shots. ”