STARKVILLE
You have to love it when a plan comes together.
On paper, a trip to the “Big House” this season for the Starkville High School girls basketball team appeared to be improbable. After all, the Lady Yellow Jackets had to replace the talented backcourt tandem of Blair Schafer and Imane Montgomery. They also figured to have a sophomore — Kelsey Jones — as their leading scorer, seniors Kayla Minor, Taylor Price, and Daija Williams and juniors Eryka Williams and Tanita Thompson in more prominent roles, and freshmen Tabreea Gandy and Jariyah Covington learning how to handle the pressure of running a team.
Kristie Williams might not admit it, but many would have offered Starkville better odds that it would play in the semifinals of the Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 6A State tournament at Mississippi Coliseum in 2016.
At 8 tonight, though, Starkville (25-4) will be back in Jackson for a shot to play for a state title. Reigning Class 6A state champion Horn Lake stands in Starkville’s way. If that sounds imposing, it should. The Lady Eagles have lost only four games this season thanks to a roster that boasts eight of 10 players as juniors or seniors.
But coaches will tell you sometimes young teams don’t get fazed by the bright lights of the big stage because they don’t know any better. Starkville certainly falls into that category. After all, who would have thought Starkville would have been able to rally from a 10-point deficit with 4 minutes, 43 seconds to go against Hattiesburg on Saturday. What about a 19-2 run to end that game?
Surely you jest.
Yet there was coach Williams clapping through 26 turnovers and weathering the ups and downs associated with a young team. Williams didn’t worry because she said her team is a lot like Thompson, an athletic, 5-foot-9 forward, who has come into her own and realized the potential many have seen in her for a long time. Thompson’s maturation can best be captured by imagining a light bulb going off over someone’s head to signify that they finally grasp the meaning of something that has befuddled them for a long time.
“We’re a very young team, as we have eluded to throughout the season,” Williams said. “Every player has found her niche. Everybody understands their role. It is not to say we need 30 points from you or 20 rebounds from you. It is giving us your best throughout that game because every game there is a new niche. Your niche in this game may be to rebound better than you did in the last game.
“Everybody understands her role. That has jelled into a great turnout of a game. We were down 10 points in the last three minutes of the game and they put it together. Everybody put their role in the pot and they decided we’re all going to lay it out here on the table because this is do or die now. Once they were bound and determined, there was no stopping them. There was no fear.”
That’s pretty heady stuff for such a young team. Coaches hope their players retain some of the lessons they convey on a daily basis. Sometimes, though, they can tell when some concepts are better left for another time.
When it works, though, it is grand. That’s why Williams is excited about tonight. Horn Lake has all the pressure on it to set up a rematch of the 2014 state title game against Olive Branch, which it won 74-39. Starkville already has won a game when it has committed 26 turnovers, so it knows it can overcome mistakes to survive and advance. How that confidence manifests itself tonight remains to be seen, but Williams knows her team’s march to the state semifinals is a great sign of growth and, possibly, even bigger things down the road.
“It is about the hard work, and it goes all of the way back to October in the preseason when you’re out on the football field running bleachers in the hot sun,” Williams said. “It all comes back to moments like that. It is just a testament to what hard work really means. That cliche hard work really does pay off, it does. Once you go back and think about all of those line drills and all of the extra shooting and putting in that extra time to get better as a group, it pays off when you’re back is against the wall and you finally have to say, ‘We worked this hard, what can we do now to make sure we keep going the rest of the way?
“That is what this team is all about. They are hungry for more, and they are ready to give their very best (today) against Horn Lake. … It’s like we’re that Cinderella team of 6A basketball because if you look at our roster, we have very inexperienced players who have never been on that big stage, so Cinderella is coming to the ball now. We hope it will just continue on.”
Adam Minichino is sports editor of The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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