What a way to come off quarantine
Lady Dragons return with ‘brutal stretch’ beginning with Oak Ridge
Clinton has one of its biggest rivalry games of the season this week at Oak Ridge on Friday, Dec. 11.
Alicia Phillips, head coach of the Lady Dragons, spoke about how they’re preparing for the game, especially after being quarantined in the two weeks leading up to it.
“We get released on Thursday, and then play at Oak Ridge on Friday,” said Phillips. “We’ll have gone 10 full days with no practice. Still, we’ve been watching film and everyone’s had assignments for different stats to look up on Oak Ridge. We’ve been having zoom meetings and checking up on each other and just trying to talk a lot of basketball.”
After Friday’s game, the schedule gets brutal for the Lady Dragons up until Christmas.
“Basically from the day we get released until Christmas, we have practice, game, practice, game, practice, game,” Phillips said. “We’re supposed to play Gatlinburg Pittman on Tuesday, but that could be changed to AC. We were originally supposed to reschedule that game to Dec. 13, but I was just informed it was moved again. We didn’t get to have scrimmages this year, so I loaded us up on games and it’s really killing us because we’ve been playing so many games and not getting to have practices in between them. At least we get to play, though. From what I’m hearing, nobody knows what the season will hold going into Christmas or what it will look like after that.
“We’ve not gotten to play a full game this season, and we’ve only had a single practice with our whole team there. Either someone’s been out due to COVID or contract tracing or injuries or something. Our game against AC was going to be our first game with all of our starters.”
Speaking about the Oak Ridge game, specifically, though, Phillips said they’re going to have to make sure they can keep up, especially after so many days off.
“Oak Ridge is always fast, so we’re obviously going to have to be able to keep up with that.” she said. “After 10 days of no practice, we’re going to have to use our rotation and timeouts a little more because the girls are probably going to be a little gassed. We should have a full rotation in there that we haven’t gotten to use all year long. They don’t go very deep into their bench. With Naiyah Sanders and Sarah Burton and Jaz Moore being our main three scorers offensively and now throwing in others, if we can get our wind and our pieces all put together in that game, then it should be a fun game to watch.
“We can put up 100 points on any given night, but we just have to be able to put up some defense,” Phillips said. “We’ve been working on that a lot lately. It doesn’t matter how much we score; if we can’t defend, then anyone can beat us.”
On the boys’ side, Coach Chris Lockard said he’s expecting the game to be tough.
“It’ll be a huge game,” he said. “It always is. It’s just such an intense game and it’s no secret that Oak Ridge has been strong the past few years. We have, too, but we’ve just not been able to quite get over that hump. ... last year, two of our three games came down to the last minute.
“They have a big boy inside that will obviously pose problems for us, but we just have to do what we do. Hopefully we can shoot the ball well and handle their pressure. We have to find ways to attack their weaknesses, but the problem is that they don’t have that many of them.
“I’m still really looking forward to it, though. It’s always tough to play over there, but especially with COVID going on, there’s so many unknown factors that just make it even harder. I’m so amazed at how well so many kids are handling all of this. It’s tough to stay focused in the classroom, let alone with sports right now. It’s tough even for us coaches, and we’re doing the best we can. We’re just going to concentrate, though, and do what we do. If that doesn’t work, then hopefully I’ve got enough tricks up my sleeve and adjustments for us to win the game.”
