Page 10 - 2018 TR Basketball Preview

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SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2018 | THREE RIVERS EDITION OF THE ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE BASKETBALL PREVIEW
ENGLAND LADY LIONS
Coach: England girls are quick and athletic
MARK BUFFALO/THREE RIVERS EDITION
England Lady Lions coach David Mackey gives instructions to his team during a recent practice.
BY DONNA LAMPKIN STEPHENS
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
England’s girls finished 23-8 last sea- son, including a 10-2 conference run, but their absence from the Class 2A State Tournament stuck with them
throughout the offseason.
“You will see a team that is hungry to get
back to the state tournament,” David Mackey said of the prospects for his 13th season at England. “We’ve got lots of seniors who are ready to get playing. We have a lot of sopho- mores who will help off the bench. We hope to make a run in the state tournament this year.”
Five are eager returning starters: Tatyana Penister, a 5-8 senior guard who averaged 25 points, 5.2 steals, 3.4 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game last season; Baylee Coleman, a 5-6 junior guard with 10.4 points; Tybriana Durham, 9.7 points and 4.9 steals; Samaria Brooks, 6.8 points and 3.1 assists; and McKenzie Cheek with 6.8 rebounds per game.
Penister, a 4.0 student, is a great scorer and shooter. Mackey said she is a college prospect.
The coach said Durham, Cheek and Antanequia Martin work hard and are physical inside. Penister, Coleman and Brooks work very well together from the outside.
Team strengths this season, the coach said, will be speed, athleticism and defense, but the Lions need to improve their team free-throw shooting and rebounding.
After the Arkansas Activities Association’s realignment cycle, England moves from the 2A-4 East to the 2A-5 South against Bigelow, Cutter Morning Star, England, Hazen, Magnet Cove, Maumelle Charter and Poyen.
Mackey said games to watch include tough 2A-5 South Conference contests against Bigelow, Dec. 20 and Jan. 29; Carlisle, Dec. 11 and Jan. 22; and Poyen, Dec. 7 and Jan. 18. All three of those reached the Class 2A state quarterfinals last season.
LONOKE LADY JACKRABBITS
Lady Rabbits to battle inexperience this season
BY MARK BUFFALO
STAFF WRITER
The Lonoke Lady Jackrabbits return only one starter from last year’s squad that went 24-10 and qualified for the Class 4A State Tournament for the second year in a row.
Senior guard Mia Brown averaged 10 points a game in 2018. She is the lone returning starter this season.
“She averaged 10 points a game, but last year, I usually made her guard the other team’s best play- er,” third-year Lonoke coach Heath Swiney said.
Swiney, who is 42-19 in two seasons at Lonoke,
said his team will be inexperienced this season. “We are somewhat inexperienced,” he said. “We have two players coming off injuries, and you can expect to see a group of kids work hard, no matter what is going on. They will give their team and their school everything that they have.” The coach said Lonoke’s best inside player is
junior Hannah Moseley.
“She has the most experience of any of my
post players,” Swiney said of Moseley, who is also a member of the Jackrabbits football team, “but we also have a ninth-grader, Kaleigh Thompson, who will be able to help us when she makes the adjustment to senior high basketball.”
The two best outside players are Brown
and senior Kaley Woodruff, the coach said. “We have two who are equal because they bring different things to the game,” Swiney said. “Mia Brown is a good 3-point shooter, and Kaley Woodruff is a great ball handler and sees the floor very well. She is coming back off an
anterior-cruciate-ligament injury.”
Swiney hopes to compete again this year but
knows it will be different.
“I told the kids all summer we could be very
successful but that we were going to be a different team,” he said. “We lost five seniors last year; four of them were starters. These kids worked hard all summer and got much better every day this summer.”
Swiney said his team’s strength is to “play hard and never take plays off.” Of course, his team’s inexperience is its weakness.
Lonoke is going into a new conference this season with the restructuring of the Arkansas Activities Association going from seven classi- fications to six. The Lady Jackrabbits are mem- bers of the 4A-5 Conference with eStem, Forrest City, Little Rock McClellan, Little Rock Mills, Pulaski Academy, Pulaski Robinson, Stuttgart and Wynne.
Swiney didn’t know how the conference would shape up this season.
“We are gong into a new conference, so we will have to see,” he said. “Over the past several seasons, we have formed a rivalry with eStem.”
MARK BUFFALO/THREE RIVERS EDITION
Lonoke’s Mia Brown is the lone returning starter for this year’s Lady Jackrabbits basketball team.
Lonoke split four games with the Lady Mets last season. They split in the regular season. EStem beat Lonoke in the district tournament, but the Lady Jackrabbits returned the favor in the third-place game of the regional tournament.
“I feel like we have a good group of kids,” Swiney said. “This year will be a fun year for all of us, but especially for the seniors.”