Melbourne continues victory roll
Melbourne girls Coach Eric Teague is sharp enough to understand that there’s bound to be some sort of drop off when a team loses a star player. That’s why the reigning two-time Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps Girls Coach of the Year never wavered in the belief that his Lady Bearkatz would have an adjustment period this season without having the services of all-star guard Kenley McCarn.
As it turns out, Teague’s thought process was on target. His team has taken a step back, but the drop hasn’t been as precipitous as some may have thought.There’s actually a bit of normalcy floating around the program nowadays.
After winning state titles in each of the past four seasons in Class 2A, Melbourne (15-6) made the jump to Class 3A and has adapted the way Teague had hoped. He just didn’t necessarily expect his Lady Bearkatz to do it so quickly.
“We’ve been getting better from week to week,” he explained. “We’re learning each other more and more. To be honest, there’s a little bit of a surprise right now because they’re doing as well as they are. I’m really tickled with them.”
It hasn’t been as exciting as of late for Lady Bearkatz opponents. Melbourne, ranked No. 3 in Class 3A, has won eight of its last nine game by an average of 31.5 points. The only team it lost to during that span was Class 3A No. 1 Salem, which has beaten the Lady Bearkatz twice this season. The other four setbacks Melbourne has endured were to Class 5A Vilonia, Greene County Tech and Nettleton – teams with a combined record of 50-14 – and to Class 6A Jonesboro, which has a very good chance of claiming a postseason berth in its first season in the state’s largest classification.
The Lady Bearkatz did experience that rough patch at the start when they began the season 0-3, which was on par with what Teague anticipated. That stretch could reasonably be attributed to trying to acclimate without McCarn, who was named the most valuable player in the state finals three times and was an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps firstteamer last season.
“It’s taken a little bit for them to mesh together and accept their roles this year,” said Teague, who led Melbourne to a combined 130-7 mark over the previous four years and had the team on a 65-game winning streak before the Lady Bearkatz lost to Vilonia in their opener. “When you lose a player like Kenley and another senior from last year in Lanie Cornelius … everybody leaned on them heavy for leadership. This group has struggled with that for most of the year so it’s had to be sort of a collective effort. And we’ve talked about it.
“We really don’t have any dominant leaders, but we’ve got some that are starting to round their games out, and it’s led to us playing better. Kaylee Love is really playing well on both ends of the floor. Kylea Morgan, a 10th grader, has done a really good job, too. I could probably name two or three more that have started taking on some leadership roles, and it’s helped tremendously.”
Teague said the collaborative effort has translated big time on offense. Melbourne has scored 63 points or more in each of its past four games. The Lady Bearkatz had scored that many points just twice in the 17 contests they’d played prior to that.
“We’re playing well,” Teague noted. “We know we’ve got to continue to do that. There’s going to be games where we’ll struggle on offense sometimes, but we’ve got to consistently find that player who’s going to score. But I like the way they’ve been able to come together.”