Brandon Thomas knew his team would be young this season.
The roster does not lie and the Winder-Barrow High School Lady Bulldogg basketball roster sees one senior, three juniors and a long list of sophomores. The result has been — to this point in the season anyway — some growing pains as the WBHS girls look for their initial victory.
“We’ll take a step forward and then a step back,” Thomas said Monday. “We played well against Jackson County but then had to turn around and play Flowery Branch, who is beating everyone.”
The Lady Bulldoggs fell 48-28 to Gainesville Saturday but trailed by only three points at halftime. Sophomore Adrianna Davis led WBHS with 11 points while teammate Shonda Caraway, the lone senior, added nine points.
“We were in the game (against Gainesville) for the most part,” Thomas said. “We are looking to be in one down the wire.”
While Thomas has been in the coaching game for several seasons, this year’s Winder-Barrow squad is his youngest. Entering the new season, he lost 95 percent of his scoring from a year ago. The players who returned averaged only three points a game.
“It’s a new experience,” the coach said. “One thing which has been difficult has been playing a complete region schedule. It didn’t allow us to protect them early in the season. We were playing region games right out of the gate.”
It’s an old sports adage, but the best way for an inexperienced sports team to get experience is to play, even if the opponent means long odds in obtaining a victory.
“You can’t learn any other way,” Thomas said. “We only have one player on our roster who has played any outside of the high school season. In practice, we work a lot on fundamentals. Scoring is a premium when you are so inexperienced.”
The Lady Bulldogg players are being told to look at the 2012-2013 in separate parts.
“The first half will be a dry run so to speak,” Thomas said. “We want to be better when we play opponents a second time. Of course, our opponent will also be better so we have to improve our play. We need to reduce turnovers. We are getting better in games. We tell them not to worry so much about the score. We want them to play hard no matter what. If you don’t then you won’t get as much out of the experience.”
The Lady Bulldogg coach said his pushes having a “team effort” this season.
“Seventeen our of our 21 players are freshmen and sophomores,” Thomas said. “That pretty much says it all.”
