Lady Panthers picking up the pace
The team is looking to play faster and score more points.
Siloam Springs girls basketball coach Tim Rippy hopes a change in style of play can make the Lady Panthers more explosive on the scoreboard.
The Lady Panthers finished 5-24 in 2016-17 with 15 of those losses coming by 10 points or less.
Rippy is trying to get the Lady Panthers to play at more of an up tempo pace to help put the ball in the basket.
“We’re just playing a lot faster, trying to run,” Rippy said after a Lady Panthers’ summer practice last week. “We definitely have enough speed to be able to do that for, probably honestly, the first time I’ve been at Siloam to be able to play that kind of tempo.”
Rippy said the Lady Panthers first unveiled their new tempo at a team camp in Rogers early in June, where they finished with a 2-2 record against all Class 7A schools. The junior varsity went 4-0 at the same camp.
“That was good for us,” Rippy said. “We saw some fruition with that (change in style). We had some success implementing that.”
Two weeks after the Rogers team camp, the Lady Panthers attended a team camp in Rolla, Mo.
Rippy said the varsity went 6-4 overall and the JV raced to a 9-1 record.
“Both groups tried to play pretty fast,” Rippy said. “By doing that, we looked better early in the day when we’re a little bit fresher. We tended to win all our early games in the day. As the day wore on, our pace wasn’t quite what we wanted to play. We struggled a little bit. We lost some close games late in the day. Also we won some games later in the day, but I think the style is going to pay off for us.”
Rippy said the Lady Panthers have plenty of depth to play at a faster pace.
“I think I have it narrowed down to 14 kids trying to make it into the top 10,” he said. “So the fall will go a long way in trying to sort that out. We rotated a lot of kids in on varsity (at team camp). We kept kind of a core group of five or six with another four or five. We were trying to play 10 in every varsity game, so we kind of rotated the other three or four between varsity and JV. The good news is we saw some kids that are really competing for those positions. I think that’s going to make our fall practice really good.”
The Lady Panthers return their top three scorers from a year ago in senior guard Morgan Vaughn, junior point guard Chloe Price and senior post Hadlee Hollenback.
Rippy said Price, who averaged a little more than 10 points per
game last year as a sophomore, has had a great summer.
“She’s had a terrific summer at the point guard position,” Rippy said. “She’s gained some maturity in decision making. She really is starting to understand the offenses that we are running and the tempo that we want to play and when we want to play fast and when we want to back off.”
With Price solidifying the point position, the Lady Panthers hope Vaughn can thrive as a shooting guard, after leading the team at just under 15 points per game last year.
“I think Morgan is going to be more effective for us being on the wing a lot more,” Rippy said. “We did that some at the end of last year. I think she’s getting more comfortable with it having played 20 to 25 games this summer, more at the wing position. She can also step over and play some point for us when we need her to.”
Rippy said senior Abby Vaughn and junior Emery Brown have had good summers working underneath the basket.
“I think both of those two are fighting to get on the floor,” he said.
Junior Hailey Dorsey has made a lot of progress as well, Rippy said.
“She looks a lot smoother,” he said. “Her shooting has come a long way, and she’s running the floor better.
“I’m excited to see how all those pieces fit together with the ones you’re already counting on like Buck (Brooklyn Buckminster) and Hadlee and some of the kids that have experience from last year.”
Rippy said Alexis Roach, who saw significant playing time as a sophomore, has moved with her family to Farmington, but other than that the Lady Panthers return most of last year’s team with Sidney Henry being the only senior lost.
Rippy said there are more kids in the girls basketball program than there’s ever been.
“We’re going to have a gym full,” he said. “We have 24 total players on the (varsity) roster, and we’ll be looking to cut that to 15 for varsity. We’ve got a full ninth-grade roster. We don’t have to move any eighth-graders up. We’ve got a full eighthgrade roster. We’ve got 21 seventh-graders.
“It’s looking bright, and we’ve got a little bit of talent in each age group.”