GREENVILLE – The Lady Wave basketball team hosted a Tuesday night pre-season scrimmage with Houston and Greenon in town for the three-way scrimmage.
“We had a slower start in our first quarter with Houston but our next four quarters we played some really good basketball, made some good shots,” said Greenville head girls basketball coach Rachael Kerns. “Defensively we did a whole lot better.”
The 2019-2010 Lady Wave varsity program brings experience to the court as well as upper classmen filling the starting spots.
“We have nine on varsity, we are going to be a little senior heavy,” Kerns noted. “We are going to start four seniors and one junior and they have bought in. They are doing exactly what we ask them to do and they are doing a really good job with that.”
“Defensively just a totally different look than what we have done in the past,” continued Kerns. “So far it is really helping us get our hands on a lot of balls and making it difficult for the other groups to score a lot of baskets.”
The Lady Wave do not put a lot of height on the court but Coach Kerns believes quickness and experience will help carry the team.
“One through five and even our guards, we’re not very big but we’re pretty mighty,” Kerns stated. “Fifty-Fifty balls we really have a really good chance of getting this year. That’s just a want thing – you want it or you don’t and I think right now we’re doing a good job of wanting it.”
“We are sneaky long – that is what I like to say,” added Kerns. “What we lack in size we pick up in strength and that first group that we have out there, we don’t just give up a lot of really easy looks. They are just doing a really good job, they are working hard and I am excited to see how we go between now and when we open up on the 30th.”
Each team scrimmaged five quarters on the court with Kerns pleased with the team’s first four quarters of play allowing her to give several of her junior varsity players valuable experience with the varsity squad.
“We was able to bring up some JV and just show them the pace of the game,” Kerns said. “We really just had to throw them at it. They don’t get to work on our team defense that we are doing this year. It was fun to see because some of them are going to fit right in when we need them next year or the year after.”
“We were just talking out there about how many times we get our hands on a ball and how many more steals we are getting verses some of the other teams,” Coach Kerns said following the scrimmage. “Still a work in progress. It’s kind of fun watching us play.”
“I think one of the biggest complements we got tonight was a coach said something to me about how he wishes he could get some of the Greenville toughness to go into them. I think it is a tribute to how far we have really come because that isn’t something people would say about us before.”
“What we really need to improve on between now and when we open up with Eaton – we just have to be ready to go from the opening tip,” concluded Coach Kerns. “There are flashes of really good basketball and then there are some flashes of – we really need to work but tonight was two really decent teams, pretty competitive, physical and we got better every quarter.”
The Greenville Lady Wave open season play Saturday, November 30 at home against the visiting Eaton Lady Eagles with a 7:30 p.m. start time.
