Wolverines expect good product on court

It’s basketball season in Cumberland again and the East Webster Wolverines have grown accustomed to putting a good product on the court for both the boys and the girls teams.

Last season, East Webster had both teams win the dis- trict in the regular season as the girls finished the year 17-5 and the boys went 16-7. Despite that, however, the Lady Wolverines each had heartbreaking losses in the district tournament championships that didn’t allow them to finish their missions as the No. 1 team in the district heading into the playoffs.

After both teams lost in the second round, East Webster head coach Jon Ginn believes there’s a measure of redemption on the minds of the players heading into the new year.

“Three out of the last four years we’ve gone into the district tournament as the one seed but couldn’t win it on the boys side,” Ginn said. “The girls have been in position as well against a great Calhoun City program. We want to take that next step. We should have won both of those games this year but just came up short. We hope we can find away to get it done.”

The girls squad enters the season returning some major production from a season ago. Most importantly they have sisters Shameriah and Shan Culpepper in the post to cause issues for opposing teams.

Shameriah missed the early part of the season last season recovering from a knee injury but is fully healthy this year and had 12 points, seven rebounds and four blocks to open the season with a win over Amory 39-35 last weekend. Shan had 11 points in the win.

Adding senior point guard to the mix in Lauren Graves has the team looking strong in the starting five.

“We bring back three really good starters with Lauren and the sisters,” Ginn said. “We should have the best inside game in the division and the best point guard and that’s a good start.”

Boys

After a breakthrough season a year ago in which Ginn’s young team played ahead of schedule, the Wolverines have depth and experience to go along with some strong talent.

While several members of the team are still playing football, East Webster lost to Amory 69-45 last week but had some learning experiences. Ginn isn’t at all worried about his squad that returns key players like Chandler Hodges, Blake Slay and Hayes Fason as well as some young players coming up that didn’t play last year.

Adding in football athletes like Zy Ford, Briceton Johnson, Jontavis Cunningham and Dee Bingham will do nothing but strengthen what looks to be a deep team.

“We lost two seniors and had another one transfer and we only played like seven guys last year, but we had a really good JV group and some good freshmen move up,” Ginn said. “There’s the potential to play more players this year than I’ve played since I’ve been here.

“I can put more pressure on teams this year. Last year we had to just manage the game. I think it’s going to be fun.”