BEAR CREEK — Chatham Central hosted Harnett Central in Gerald L. Binkley Gymnasium last Tuesday night as both the women’s and men’s basketball teams engaged in a final pre-season scrimmage prior to the Bears and Trojans opening the regular season on the road next week.
The scrimmages were conducted in two phases; in phase one, teams played four quarters with a running clock, allowing liberal substitutions as coaches experimented with various lineups on the floor, while phase two consisted of one quarter played under normal game conditions.
Following the conclusion of their respective scrimmages, all four coaches provided an assessment on how their teams performed.
Lady Bears’ coach Lynda Burke indicated afterwards she was optimistic with respect to the upcoming season. “I was pleased overall with how well we played together,” noted Burke. “I thought we did a real good job boxing out and rebounding, something we worked on in practice Monday, then came out and executed.”
“Defensively we played a solid 2-3 zone, with Cami Hughes, Grace Joes and Olivia Hudson very active on the boards, and we also got a lot of help in the paint from Savannah Stilwell, Sophie Phillips and Tanner Little.
“Our offense is still a work in progress,” continued Burke. “We moved the ball well at times but we also tried to force some things that weren’t there, causing turnovers. Part of that is a result of players being very unselfish and wanting to pass instead of shoot.”
Lady Trojans’ coach Kathryn Griffith remarked her team looked good at times and sloppy on other occasions.
“We’re still learning the offense and how to play at game speed with six new girls on our roster,” said Griffith. “We got frustrated against Chatham Central’s zone and need to develop more patience moving the ball around. Our 6’3” center (junior Syniah McMiller) is not only a great shot-blocker, but with her soft touch around the rim she can put a lot of pressure on an opponent when she posts up in the paint, and we need to do a better job getting her the ball inside. While I thought our first-team defense played well, we need to improve our rebounding by not getting boxed out so easily on the boards.”
Bears’ coach Robert Burke related the scrimmage showed him his club still has work to do. “While I feel like we have the potential to be better than last year, we have a lot of underclassmen this season, so we’re looking at different personnel playing different spots, and that led to some turnovers tonight,” commented Burke.
“We’re having to replace three starters, including our number two scorer from last year, and this outing gave me an opportunity to see how everyone fits in as we’ll likely go with a seven-man rotation,” Burke said. “Two concerns I had this evening were our failure to get back on defense to slow down our opponent’s transition game and the fact we didn’t do a good job crashing the boards.”
Trojans’ coach William Gage indicated one of the positive things he saw was the way his players fed off each other. “Offensively I thought we did a good job moving the ball and looking for the open man, especially when we had four guards on the court,” said Gage.
“Although we need better production from our post players,” he said, “we have some good outside shooters who aren’t afraid to fire it up from the perimeter if they’re open, while a lot of our defensive mistakes tonight came from being out of position as we need to do a better job moving our feet instead of picking up fouls by reaching.”