Lady Jackets in first of 2 holiday events
Calhoun High School head girls basketball coach Jaime Echols calls what his team is doing right now, “organized chaos.”
To the teams they have played so far, they would probably drop the adjective and just call it chaos.
The Yellow Jackets stood 7-1 on the year and were looking for more as they opened this week with a 52-45 victory Monday morning over Murray County to start the North Murray Mistletoe Madness Tournament.
After beating North Murray, the Yellow Jackets advanced to the second round Tuesday against the winner of the Dalton-McMinn (Tennessee) game (details were not available at press time) with a win there putting them in Wednesday night’s finals.
Before the season began, Echols said he had a talented group that just needed to play because inexperience was the only thing possibly holding them back. But by using a lot of different players and playing at a fast, fast pace all the time, they have won seven of their first eight and look like a team truly on the rise.
“We are off to a good start,” Echols said. “We’ve got a lot of young players and a lot of new players, but they’ve been doing a real nice job for us. We’ve got a best test in this (North Murray tournament) against some very good teams, but I’m very pleased with our start.
“The girls have been having some very good practices and we’re going into this tournament having not played in 11 days, so we’ve had lots of time in the gym. And I think we’re all ready to see somebody else instead of just grinding like we have been lately, against each other.”
He said after such a lengthy midseason layoff, it will be interesting to see how they respond to what will be essentially a trio of games in about 48 hours from Monday afternoon to hopefully the championship game Wednesday night.
“The number one thing I want to see is if we can play our style of basketball three days in a row.” Echols said. “When you play that many games in that short of an amount of time, you’re going to have some tired teams, so I want to see if we can play the way we want to play for three days in a row.
“We want to push the pace both offensively and defensively. We do feel like because of all the different players that we have played, that have played very well for us, that our depth will help us play that many games in that amount of time, but it’s still a tough thing to do, so I’m anxious to see how we handle it and how we come out of it, because right now, we’re trying to cut down on that (playing) rotation a little bit and kind of figure out exactly where we are when Region starts and that’s not that far away.”
They have been money at both ends of the floor through the first month of games, averaging 55 points a game while giving up less than 42. And in their seven wins, they have been on average. outscoring the opposition, 57-39.
“We want to wear these teams down with our pressure defense and by playing an uptempo offense and with our depth if we can,” Echols said. “We have had a lot of girls that have played very well for us at both ends of the floor and we think they’re players that are only going to keep getting better because a lot of them are very young. But this tournament we’re in (right now) is a real test for us and I’m looking forward to it.”
All of his players do defend because that is where the emphasis for coach Echols and his staff is, but they have had serious balanced scoring early in the year.
Junior point guard Britiya
Curtis is the team’s leading scorer, but junior guard Lauren Watson, sophomore guard Avery Greeson, freshman guard Saniah Dorsey and fellow freshman guard Kat Atha have also had games of 10 points or more this year.
In two games, four different Lady Jackets reached double figures scoring and in three others, a trio of girls hit double digits. And in their win over Chattooga three weeks ago, Dorsey led the girls in gold with 16 points while Greeson kicked in 10 and Watson, Atha, and McKenzie Cumbee combined for 24 more with eight points apiece.
“When you look at our team, we only have three girls who are basketball players and the rest of them are athletes who can do a lot of different things and this group has a lot of girls who are real offensive threats,” Echols said. “And that’s a change for us from the past few years. We had some girls who could really score, but not like this group. This group has a lot of girls who have shown they can put the ball in the basket and it’s been different players on different nights that have really stepped it up. So we feel like if we have a girl or two who is maybe having an off-night, then somebody else will step up and fill that void.”
After playing in North Murray, the team opens play next week in the Adairsville Christmas Clash tournament on Tuesday, Dec. 28. They again will have three games in three days and are then off until they open the Region 7 schedule on Tuesday, January 11 at The Hive against Hiram.