The time of the basketball season when game results count begins Nov.
14 for the home opener against Putnam County, following this Saturday’s home scrimmage against Houston County.
Both the Greyhounds and Lady Greyhounds embraced the next step in building toward that on Saturday with their Purple & White game, consisting of an intrasquad scrimmage for both teams comprised of a pair of 20-minute halves.
“You can practice all you want, but nothing simulates a game,” Lady Greyhounds head coach Takeo Gray said.
Both rosters were split up with a mix of experienced and new players, giving coaches for both teams a means to get a look at not only how those up and down the roster would compete, but also within the variable of fans in the stands.
The purple team won the girls game 45-38 with the boys game being settled in overtime as the purple team prevailed 31-29.
“I kept the offense very, very vanilla,” Greyhounds head coach Willie Reese said. “When it comes to a scrimmage, I am not going go to show you much, because you always have to think someone might be filming you somewhere.”
Given that a number of those taking the court for the Hounds were freshmen, players youthladen roster logging minutes was also key.
“Having fans in the stands and for them to see the correlation of us going over plays in practice and seeing how they develop in the game, that was big for them, especially the freshmen,” Reese said.
For the Lady Hounds, the agenda for Saturday was similar – seeing how the mix of experience and youth would gel on the court and react in a setting other than a summer league tournament with few watching or within a practice. “The biggest thing is that I wanted to see them compete. We have a lot of young girls who had not really played in front of a crowd before,” Gray said. “We wanted them to be able to do that, I was really how they played and competed.”
Both teams will now practice this week ahead of next week’s season opener.
“The real season starts in a few weeks, so it was important to see us play and compete,” Gray said.
