Lady Jackets end year at Adairsville
Looking to put the final touches on their team with the Region 7 schedule up next, the Calhoun High School girls basketball is back in action this week at the Tiger Christmas Clash in Adairsville.
The Lady Jackets, who are an exceptional 8-2 on the year, opened play Tuesday afternoon in Adairsville against Morgan County and depending on what they do in that game, will be back at it Wednesday to face either Cass or Parkview. (Details of those games were not available at press time).
“I’m excited about the teams we’re playing this week,” Calhoun head girls basketball coach Jamie Echols said. “We are playing some very good teams in this tournament. We are playing some high quality teams in this tournament, so I’m excited to see how we stack up against them and to kind of see where we are against that level of talent.”
“Morgan County is a team that always makes the playoffs and then always makes a deep run in the playoffs, so they will be a good test. And then we are looking at either Cass or Parkview in the second round and those are two quality programs. We know a lot about Cass, obviously, because they are in our Region and they’re always tough. But Parkview is a big 7A school and you always find out a lot about yourselves when you play a real big school like that, so we know we’re facing some really good teams in this tournament and I’m anxious to see how we do against them.”
They last played last week, taking two of three games in the Mistletoe Madness tournament. They began with a hard-fought win over Murray County before they lost a Dalton team they had already beaten. But in their third and final game, they bounced back in a big way with a 68-33 wipeout of North Murray.
Echols said his girls, despite a loss, made a good showing at the Mistletoe Madness event.
“One of the things we wanted to see going into that tournament was, could we play our style, the up-tempo pace, for three days in a row and I thought the girls did a great job with
that,” he said. “We came in three days in a row and were able to get up-anddown the floor and play at the pace we wanted too.
“We didn’t shoot real well against Dalton, but they have a real good team and I think they wanted to give us a little payback for that first game between us and they just made a couple of more plays at the end than we did, but we played real well in that first game, even though we missed a lot of shots, and then we had a really good game to close it out against Murrya, so we were pleased with it.”
He said his girls also put the loss behind in the best way he can imagine.
“The girls weren’t happy after that loss to Dalton and so we held a (Wednesday) morning shoot-around before we got on the bus and all the players were in the gym 45 minutes before they were supposed to be, working on their shooting and talking basketball and so that gave me a real good feeling about the game,” Echols said. “And then we went out and played real well. So it was good to see the girls put that loss behind them and come out and play like they did. You don’t ever want to lose. I mean we are playing to win and then girls are playing to win, but when you lose and then respond the way these girls did, that’s a good sign to me that we are not only making progress on the court, but the girls are learning just what it takes to be a successful varsity basketball team.”
Junior guard Britiya Curtis reached double figure scoring in two of the three games and freshman guard Kat Atha was in double digits in all three other girls. There were also quite a few eight and nine-point games from other players and Echols said the number of girls who can put it in the bucket consistently is starting to come to the forefront.
“Our scoring was really spread out in that tournament and that’s very encouraging going forward,” Echols said. “Dalton did some things to try and take away a couple of our scorers and I think we panicked
a little bit. But we talked about it and tried to use it as a learning experience and tried to stress to the girls that if teams do take away a couple of our scorers, then we’ve got others who can pick up the slack.
“And I do think we will be seeing teams that try to keep a couple of players from having their usual night scoring-wise and when that happens, we’ve got to be ready for it. And we’ve got to know how to respond to it.”
The games in Adairsville, which wrap up Thursday, are the team’s final ones until Tuesday, Jan. 11 when they host Hiram in their 5A Region 7 opener and Echols said they want to end 2020 with a bang.
“I just want to see us go out and continue to grow as a team,” he said. “We’ve gotten off to a very nice start and the girls have surprised me a little bit with how quickly they’ve picked up what we’re trying to do. I knew this was a talented group, but I also know that this is a young group with a few freshmen and not a lot of varsity experience, so I thought we would really start to hit our stride around the time Region started, but the girls, from Day One, have come in focused and determined to be the best they can be and we have played really well to this point.
“In the game we lost, we didn’t shoot well and Dalton is a quality opponent that we knew would really be ready to go for that second matchup with them, but the girls have worked hard and bought into what we want to do and how we want to play and it’s really paid off with a nice start for us.
“After this tournament, the Region games are here and we want to use these three games as another building block. We’re playing some quality teams and so I’m excited to see where we stand against some of these bigger schools. This group is a fun bunch of girls to coach and I am very pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. But there’s still a lot of basketball to be played, so there’s still a long way to go, and I just want to see us continue to go out there and compete and continue to work hard to get better.”