Jefferson's basketball team is off to a 2-1 start, but head coach Bolling DuBose said his team needs to quicken its step in these coming weeks.
The Dragons — who like to run up and down the floor and score points in bunches — didn’t light up the scoreboard in any of their three games in Jefferson’s tip-off tournament last week in a third-place finish.
“We’re not running with the ball like I want to,” DuBose said. “We scored in the 50s in all three games.”
Jefferson averaged 55.7 points a game, beating West Hall 58-52 and Franklin County 55-45 and losing to Heritage 66-54.
But a faster pace will come with time, according to DuBose who guided his Dragons to a Final Four finish a year ago.
Some on the team are still getting conditioned, especially those who missed much of the preseason while playing football.
“It’s certainly not something to be concerned about right now,” DuBose said. “Now if we’re still doing this halfway through January, I’ll be concerned.”
That said, the tip-off event wasn’t by any means a bad tournament for Jefferson. DuBose noted that his Dragons beat two good teams — West Hall and Franklin County were both Class AAA state tournament teams — and lost to a senior-laden Heritage team that went on to win the tip-off tournament. Jefferson showed its resiliency on the final day, overcoming an early 16-4 deficit against Franklin County to defeat the Lions. David Watson led a balanced Jefferson attack with 11 points.
“Number one, we got some wins against some good teams and then we found some things we need to work on,” DuBose said.
The veteran coach said it usually takes 10-12 games to sort out which lineups work best and play with the tempo to which the program is accustomed.
Last year, it took until about Christmas for the Dragons to, literally, get to full speed.
“That’s when I started seeing it coming,” DuBose said.
And once this team gets its legs under it, he expects good things to happen.
“We’ll shoot it better once we start running with it,” DuBose said.
There are defensive points of emphasis, too. DuBose said the tournament showed that the Dragons need to step up their man-to-man game and do a better job of stopping opponents from scoring inside.
Jefferson will try to improve upon that this weekend when it takes on Johnson Friday at home and Mountain View Saturday on the road.
DuBose said Johnson is “really good” and will run with the ball, while Mountain View has 13 seniors and perhaps the best shooter in the tournament.
“This weekend we’ll have two games that are really good for us,” DuBose said.
NOTES: Heritage’s D.Q. Jackson was named the Tabo’s Tip-Off Tournament MVP.
Dezan Gibby (Heritage), Yonel Brown (Berkmar), Brandon Thompson (Berkmar), KeShaun Mayfield (Franklin County) and David Watson (Jefferson) were named to the all-tournament team.
