Entering week eight of the season, the Morgan County basketball team still hasn’t played a game with its full roster.
The Dogs have missed players for several different reasons, but they’ve had success in the first half of the year.
Morgan County head coach Cody Anderson is confident he will have a full team by the end of the week.
“We’re 14 games in, but we have yet to play a game with our entire team, and we’re a lot closer to that,” he said.
Morgan County entered the week at 8-6 and ranked No. 10 in Class 2A. The Dogs have missed starters, including Jacoby Simmons and Zeki Locus, as well as contributor Kobi Jefferies, and have been forced to play younger players like Garrett Ward and Trey Carter, who have already fared well against tough competition.
Anderson’s squad has competed in non-region games against Putnam County, currently ranked No. 1 in Class A Division I, Winder-Barrow, Hart County, Starr’s Mill, and others, as well as several out-of-state teams.
Anderson thinks the challenging schedule and two overnight trips will help his team in the long run.
“We had an opportunity to take two overnight trips. One to Alabama and the other to South Carolina,” the fourth-year head coach of the Dogs said. “Really, it was just to get the kids away and bond as a team and play out of state. It was against really good competition that we don’t normally face. We didn’t know anything (about those teams), but I was pleased with how we competed and where we are.
“In my opinion, our record is a little deceptive,” Anderson continued. “We’ve played a really tough schedule, and we’ve played a majority of our basketball games without our upperclassmen. The experience those young guys have gained through all that has put us in a good position to go, and hopefully start playing our best basketball as we begin region play.”
Anderson highlighted that the team’s chemistry is also strong, especially after its latest trip to Alabama over the holiday break. He said that the players are growing as a unit and that each one has learned their role.
“As you look across high school basketball, many coaches are shifting away from relying on deep rotations, and are now favoring six-or-seven-man lineups,” Anderson said. “And the reason for that, unfortunately, is chemistry. It’s parent issues. It’s connection issues. It’s jealousy. It’s all those things. I think it’s harder to push your bench to eight, nine, 10, 11, or 12 players because kids want bigger roles. They don’t want to develop through the process, so we’ve challenged our guys. We have 10 or maybe 11 players who could start on many teams in our league, and having that kind of depth is a weapon and a curse.”
Anderson and his staff were upfront with their players at the start of the season, but said they’ve bought into the process.
“We’ve been proactive about it, addressed it, and, to their credit, I think we’ve handled it pretty well,” he said. “We’ve got guys who were missing early, and others were playing much bigger roles, but now, they’ve maybe gone from starting to only playing 25 minutes.
Maybe now they’re the seventh or eighth man off the bench, only playing 17 minutes.
“Can we, as a group, keep it about Morgan? Can we excel in our roles? Can we make our minutes matter, not just tally them? Those are the things we’ve really discussed a lot.”
Morgan County starts region play at home against Westside (Macon) on Friday, then faces Miller Grove Saturday in a non-region matchup. Next week, the Dogs will play at Rutland on Jan. 13 and at Jackson on Jan. 16.