While winning a tournament like the H&H Holiday Hoopfest tournament might not seem like a huge accomplishment in the grand scheme of a high school basketball season, McCracken County girls basketball coach Scott Sivills says the victories over the break were just what his team needed to get energized heading into the new year.
Now on a 6-game winning streak, the Lady Mustangs hold an 8-3 record, something that Sivills says is above par for where he thought his team would be a month ago.
“If you had asked me a month ago if I would be happy with an 8-3 record heading into the new year I would say absolutely,” Sivills said. “We have some kids that have really stepped up in the last few games and are playing really well and all of our wins have been complete team efforts.”
The back end of their current 6-game streak was in the H&H Holiday Hoopfest at Logan County High School. Over the stretch of three days, the Lady Mustangs took down Oldham County 63-22, Caldwell County 44-35 and Logan County 53-41 to claim the tournament championship.
“Right before the tournament started I really started to see our confidence start to build and through those three days they started to show some composure through some adversity that they fought through and found a way to win,” Sivills said.
Despite their three losses earlier in the month, the Lady Mustangs led in the fourth quarter of each of those games, proving that they can hang with anyone. Those three losses came against Henderson County in the second game of the season (62-49), to Crittenden County (56-49) and the Marshall County (38-31).
“After that Marshall loss we really felt like we gave one away there,” Sivills said. “I wouldn’t say we had to regroup, but we just had to change our mindset and focus on our offensive efficiency and our tempo.”
Those changes seem to have done the trick for now as they’ve won every game since that Marshall loss on December 11.
“When you’re winning basketball games everything is a lot more positive on and off the court,” Sivills said. “Right now we are doing that and it’s because of an overall team effort and we haven’t even seen how good some of our girls can really be just yet.”
Sivills made reference to sophomore guard Ava Hughes who’s leading the team with 14.9 points per game and 149 points total, stating that she’s one of those girls whose ceiling hasn’t been reached yet this season. The addition to Mason Clements, who’s coming off the bench and averaging 10.5ppg and 116 total points is another Lady Mustangs who hasn’t cracked her full potential.
“I’ve been doing this for 31 years now and I’ve seen a lot of First Region basketball,” Sivills said. “For us, we have to make sure we continue our momentum forward and not allow ourselves to take any steps backward. Our schedule if very tough. We still have to play Marshall one more time, still have to play Calloway and Graves twice, so we have some tough games ahead of us. But, playing these First Region teams will only make us better.”
The Lady Mustangs will get right back to work on Friday as they host Graves County (3-7).