As the summer’s second dead-week approaches, the Greene County girls' basketball team hosted a “play date” in the school’s gymnasium last week.
The event saw multiple schools from around the region participate as they scrimmaged each other. The Lady Tigers played Washington County and Harlem High School towards the end of the day after opening up with Apalachee.
Head coach Derrick Williams believed that the team ended the summer on a positive note and got solid exposure the last couple of months.
“It was good competition all around, and we played well,” Williams said. “We even had a college coach come who is a friend of mine at USC Salkehatchie in Walterboro, South Carolina, which is good because he saw a bunch of girls that he liked from all the schools.
“I have no complaints about how the summer went.”
Along with the exposure, every girl on the Lady Tigers’ roster was able to get valuable time on the court.
Originally, Greene County was not supposed to play Apalachee the morning of the “event,” but after a couple of other schools came forward with scheduling issues, Williams was able to set up a junior varsity game between the Lady Tigers and the Lady Wildcats.
Williams acknowledged how getting real-time reps on the court helped with the younger girls’ development.
“It went well and was good for my younger girls,” he said. “I was worried about how much playing time they would actually get against Washington County and Harlem, but it was good They played well and only ended up losing by five, but they competed, and that’s all I can ask for.”
Greene County returns all but one player from last year’s roster after finishing last season 11-12 and barely missing the state playoffs.
With all that experience coming back, the Lady Tigers have high expectations for their level of play on both sides of the ball.
Williams believes his girls have already shown a great level of defensive tenacity, and that it will be the play on that end of the court that will dictate Greene County’s success this upcoming season.
“Defensively, we’ve turned into a monster. I had never seen these girls, defensively, play the way they did,” Williams said. “Man-to-man, talking on defense and switching on screens - it got kind of scary, and I realized if we can keep this defensive intensity up throughout the regular season, we could be pretty good.”
Even though a couple of girls will start the season banged up, Williams believes his girls will rally and put together a season they can be proud of when it’s all said and done.