RINGGOLD TIGERS FULL COURT PRESS
With Ringgold head coach Josh Hensley
Now that you’ve had a full season as a head coach under your belt, what are the one or two main things you’ve learned?
I guess the biggest lesson I had to learn last year was that success takes time. One mistake I made last year was that when we were not having success, I was quick to change what we were doing. After Christmas, I decided to stick with our sets, regardless of the success or lack of success we were having with them, and it paid off for us at the end of the year.
Starting at a new program takes time to build success, especially when the team was as young as we were. Basketball is a sport where you want to be playing your best ball at the end of the year and I felt like being consistent with our offensive and defensive sets, post-Christmas, allowed us to do so.
What are the one or two main areas you believe this team will improve upon from last year?
I believe the main area of improvement will be finishing games. We were young last year and it showed late in games. There were six games last year where we had a lead at some point in the fourth quarter and lost. We won three out of our last four games last year because we were able to finish those games, unlike the others.
We are returning four out of five starters this year and eight varsity players, total. The growing pains we went through last year will hopefully pay off for us this year.
What is the strength of this year’s team, or what do you think it will be by the time the season gets into region play?
Defense will be our strength and it has to be our strength in order for us to be successful. We have some bigger guys in our frontcourt that can defend the rim and I think our guards can get down and guard anybody.
What is the key or keys to this season?
We are going to hang our hat on defense and defensive pressure, but the key for us to get where we want to be is going to be scoring. Last year, we went through some quarters only scoring five or six points as a team. I feel like we have some guys that can score, so we need to be more consistent.
I think another key to help us score is going to be putting more defensive pressure on opponents and turning our defense into offense. I feel more comfortable pressing opponents this year than I did last year.