Eaglettes seek consistency

With the majority of the scoring gone from last year's team, young and inexperienced players had to develop and others would have to take on new roles.

Ceny Phelps and Hannah Dawson graduated and moved on to the next level, taking a lot of points and experience with them but leaving the opportunity for others to step up.

After a slow start, the Eaglettes are beginning to find their "groove," especially on the offensive end of the court.

"I think there have been a huge number of improvements by this team since the start of the season, the biggest being learning how to play hard," Burkey said. "With that said, I do think we're playing harder that we were at the start of the season.

"We started the season with only one player (Janie Graves) with a lot of experience and her role on the team changed to become more of a scorer. Every member of our team had to change their role from last year and it has been a work in progress but we have come miles and miles."

The Eaglette offense still has far to go but their shooting percentage has improved throughout the season.

As tournament time nears, Shelbyville looks to play the role of spoiler.

"We have yet to play our best game," Burkey said. "Our best game is somewhere in front of us and that's a good thing. You always want to peak at the right time and that time is right before tournament time. We're getting close but we've still got to be more consistent in our play. If we can do that I think we can go deep into the tournament and maybe surprise some people."

The Eaglettes have always "hung their hat" on playing defense and that hasn't changed. Shelbyville is allowing slightly over 40 points a game and that's an impressive statement considering the opponents they've played on their schedule.

An area of concern for the Eaglettes as a team is taking care of the basketball and the number of turnovers they commit.

"We've made some improvement but we still make entirely too many turnovers," Burkey said. "It's plain and simple, we've got to do a better job of taking care of the basketball. We continue to work on that and place a lot of emphasis in that area."

Graves, who's verbally committed to Alabama-Huntsville, has successfully taken on the role as Shelbyville's leading scorer.

Senior point guard Callisha Johnson has picked up some slack on the offensive end with her ability to score off the dribble and can the 3-pointer.

Senior Katlin Buchanan, along with junior Keely Sale, are the two most improved players of the team. Sophomore Kelsie Smith rounds out the starting five for the Eaglettes.

The ability to get the ball inside the paint and Smith's skill to put the ball in the basket has been a key factor in the Eaglettes' improvement on offense.

Columbia will host the District 8-AAA tournament with Shelbyville hosting the Region 4-AAA tournament.

The district tournament should be very competitive with Lawrence County being the top seed. The region tournament will be even more of a challenge with very successful and talented teams like District 7-AAA's Riverdale, Blackman, La Vergne and Siegel just to name a few.

"There's no doubt that we've got our work cut out for us," Burkey said. "The district and region tournaments are going to be a huge challenge with the number of quality teams that will be there, but I think our girls are up for the challenge. They know that we've made more improvement compared to other teams and we've also closed the gap between some of the top teams in the district and region since we played the earlier in the season."

The Eaglettes lost to Lincoln County earlier in the season then claimed a huge win on the road two weeks ago. They almost upset Blackman on the road after suffering a hard loss at the start of the season then fell a little short last week against district-leading Lawrence County in a game they should have won.

"Going into the postseason, I know our overall record is not as good as we'd like for it to be but we've prepared for every team the same and we're going to continue to do that," Burkey said. "We don't care if we're the underdog or overdog. We're going into the postseason with the mindset to win each game and do the best we can do."