Plains preps for county tournament
Kayla Revier boxes out Franky Winebrenner during a free-throw attempt at the Orange and Black scrimmage.
Carson Lilja holds the ball for the Horsemen during an inter-squad scrimmage on Saturday afternoon.
Brandyn Smith pushing the ball in transition for his black team, which lost the scrimmage 51-36.
Assistant coach Matt Diehl addressed his black team during a timeout.
By Mike Miller
Valley Press
In preparation for the beginning of the regular season at the Sanders County tournament on Friday Dec. 9, Plains held it’s annual Orange and Black intersquad scrimmage last Saturday.
“I think the biggest advantage this early in the season is to take a look at the kids that are going be playing on varsity to see how they do in a game situation,” Horsemen head coach Cory Ovitt said.
“That scrimmage we were mainly looking for their fundamentals,” Trotter head coach Richard Griffin said. “Then seeing which girls played together well with which girls.”
The scrimmage gave each team a chance to play in front of a live crowd, with real officials in a competitive situation, which both coaches agreed was an invaluable experience heading into the county tournament this weekend.
It provided an opportunity for each coach to see how his players communicated on defense, ran plays on offense, and transitioned from one end of the court to the other.
Additionally, coaches were able to look at how players executed their fundamentals, like passing, shooting and footwork, in a pressure situation.
Although each coach took a different approach to the exercise, the end goal was the same, prepping his team for the regular season.
The boys warmed up as one unit and maintained their teams throughout, while the girls split into two teams for warm-ups, and then switched teams and even re-set the score at half-time.
“I was disappointed in their conditioning, but as far as overall play, they ran the new offense pretty well, I was happy about that,” Ovitt said. “I saw some good things out of kids that I didn’t expect, that was a definite plus.”
John Zigler, Taylor Firestone, Jeff Revier and Robert Earhart stood out for the horsemen as they remained composed and played well for the duration of the scrimmage.
“They stood out,” Ovitt said. “They ran the game plan, stayed under control and didn’t get too tired.”
Ovitt plans on cleaning up some issues with his offense, and working on his team’s conditioning level before the tournament on Friday.
“It’s always a good turnout at the Coffee Cup being as it’s the four team’s from our county,” he said. “We’re all pretty excited about getting to play a real game.”
I think last weekend was a good start to get the nerves out, learning our new system, and playing in front of a crowd,” Griffin said. We haven’t spent a lot of time scrimmaging in the last two weeks because we’ve been working on the fundamentals, footwork, how to pass, and doing a lot of lay-ups.”
“This week we’ll start scrimmaging more. We’ll give them more of a game like atmosphere at practice, so when they do start out on Friday maybe their nerves won’t be so high and they can just go out there and play with confidence in what they know how to do,” he said.
Griffin used a different strategy splitting his squad for the first half, and using the second to pit his varsity and junior varsity against one another
“I just wanted to see how the junior varsity and varsity would play with each other,” Griffin said. “It was about getting those eight or nine girls playing together and learning how to play with each other.”
Overall, Griffin was pleased with his team’s performance although he articulated some areas that will need to be improved heading into the season.
“Eventually we’ll have to pick the speed up a little bit, but I think our first game with all of us, me gelling with them and them gelling with me, it seems to be going pretty good so far,” he said.
Although the girls ran their offense effective, Griffin senses some hesitation at times.
“I like to tell them that if you’re thinking about it, you’re usually too slow. If you think she’s open, then by the time you throw it to her she might not be,” he said.
He stressed the importance of confidence in everything his girls do from shooting to decision making to play calling and even in one another.
“That’s going to be a huge thing for us this week,” Griffin said. “You might miss four shots, but you might make the next four shots so you’ve got to keep shooting. You can’t worry about it.”