GREENE COUNTY
The Lake Oconee Academy girls basketball program is coming off of its second trip to the GHSA Class A Division II State title game, and they are already practicing again.
The Lady Titans got back in the gym earlier this week for the first time since last January, and head coach Savannah Soles told the Lake Oconee News that the girls have just been working on the fundamentals to get back in the swing of things.
“Fundamentals are very key to being a good team,” Soles said. “We started practices [earlier this week] and go for about two hours every day. We try to be efficient when we’re in the gym. We try to do ball handling and position work every day and work on our transition game a lot because we want to be able to get out and run this year. They came back after Fall break ready to go, and I’ve liked the energy and effort I’ve seen so far.”
The Lady Titans went 28-3 last season and finished region play with an 11-1 record — finishing as the top seed from their region.
Unfortunately for Soles, a decent bit of that production graduated over the offseason, so she understands that her squad may be younger and more inexperienced this season.
“We graduated a lot of girls that had been getting minutes since they were freshmen, so we’ll miss them in some aspects,” Soles said. “But we’re also excited about the girls we have coming up. This is the biggest roster we’ve had since I’ve been here, so it’s exciting that we’ll have 12 players — five upperclassmen and seven underclassmen. Our older girls know what it takes to succeed and make a run in the playoffs, so their experience will be valuable to us this season.”
The Lady Titans began getting back to the basics and having the team figure out each other’s tendencies this past Monday.
Soles acknowledged it’s important for the girls to have good chemistry with one another, and that it’s part of her job to make sure that is facilitated in the best way possible.
“As a coach, you have to assess your players each year and put them in the type of system that will let them succeed,” Soles said. “Our schemes will be similar to what we’ve done in the past, but we’re also going to mix it up some. We want to make sure we aren’t one-dimensional, and the girls are excited for the season.”
One of the positives for this team coming into the season is its roster size.
Lake Oconee Academy hasn’t had much depth over the last couple of seasons, but with its biggest roster in years, Soles believes there will be a lot of players that can contribute this year.
She touched on some of the important returning players and that they will influence the underclassmen as they get closer to the season opener.
“We return Georgia Bosart and Jane Monachello, and they’ve played a lot of varsity minutes for us so far in their careers here,” Soles said. “We also have a couple of younger girls that have been sort of our sixth and seventh girls off the bench. Ansleigh Padgett and Mary Claire McCommons are going to be big-time for us this year, and we’ll have some freshmen coming from middle school that will hopefully be able to contribute.”
The team’s first game isn’t until the middle of November, but Soles understands the importance of getting out in the hardwood early which is why the team now practices five days a week.