“The prescription for you to win a game is to follow the fundamentals,” Springstead girls basketball coach Lonnie White told his players.
Springstead Lady Eagles varsity basketball hosted a preseason scrimmage game, Thursday Nov. 15, against the Lady Gulf Buccaneers.
The Eagles took an early confident lead in the first quarter but Gulf dominated the court earning the win. The final score was Gulf 44, Springstead 28.
Coach Lonnie White, in his first official season as the head coach for the Lady Eagles, remarked,
“That first half- everybody was clicking on the same cylinders, they lost a little bit of that, so once they started making errors they started getting away from the things that were making them successful in the first half.”
White said that the team went back to basics to try to bounce back. “Let’s move the ball, run the sets that we know how to do, but we got hammered by the turnover bug,” he explained.
Coach White is urging his players to develop their “basketball IQ.”
“That is one of the staples because if you’re coming up the court and dribbling the ball and you got a lot of pressure on you- don’t go with your first reaction which is to freeze up and just toss the ball away,” White explained. “We have to see what the defensive [side] is giving you verses being impulsive.”
“I am a big defensive coach, and I thought we were pretty conditioned but I think we started getting a little lazy, and as the season progresses you’ll probably see us tighten up more and become more vigilant about following their assignments,” White added.
During their preseason the varsity girls scrimmaged the boys JV basketball team.
“It’s something we do every year, it allows us to again to see where we we can find improvements,” White said.
The Lady Eagles travel to Lecanto for their first game of the season on November 19th.
