Expectations were high for the James Monroe girls basketball team coming into the season.
After a two-point loss on the road to River View in the sectional championship last season, the Mavericks fell in the regional title game at Webster County while River View breezed to a regional title and a state tournament berth.
With most of last year’s squad back, the Lady Mavericks seemed poised to finally return to Charleston.
By Dec. 17 those hopes were dead in the water.
Bouts with Covid and an in-season coaching change were just footnotes in a 1-5 start. Two months later the Mavericks are a different team.
Since their 1-5 start, they’ve ripped off a 10-1 record, winning nine straight. Their lone loss came against Class AAAA power Greenbrier East on Jan. 5, meaning they’ve known only victory for the last six weeks
“The competition the first couple of games was pretty tough,” James Monroe coach Michael Hines said. “The first couple of games we had Greenbrier East and Oak Hill then had a game against a pretty good Narrows team. We were just trying to feel out who we might be for this season.”
After former head coach Matt Phillips stepped down due to health concerns, Hines, an assistant under Phillips, stepped up to captain the ship.
His first order of business was to roll with the concepts the girls were familiar with before slowly adding and installing new defenses and offenses to best utilize the personnel at his disposal.
“We kind of finished out December with what he had in place already,” Hines said. “Over Christmas break and the rest of December, me and the assistant coaches kind of added in on what he had done. We put in a couple different offenses and maybe some different defenses that we felt we had the personnel for. We’re maybe a little more uptempo and we can go with four guards and one big at a lot of times. We’re able to put some pressure on some teams where maybe before we would’ve played like a 2-3 zone or 3-2.”
Hines’ familiarity helped him put the kids at his disposal in a position to win. That coupled with his rapport with his coaching staff has made adjusting on the fly and addressing the team’s weaknesses easier than if he had just jumped in blind.
“I knew the limitations each girl possessed and their abilities,” Hines said. “A lot of coaching, you have to understand your personnel. Me and my assistants, we work really well together so we really talk a lot before and after practice and try to figure things out. That’s helped us win a lot lately. The girls have bought into practice and we’re practicing harder. They’re playing harder. We’ve still got a long way to go and we’re a long way from where we need to be defensively.”
The early struggles were disappointing but three of the five losses early in the season came by less than five points. Hines made sure to point that out to his team, showing them they were on the verge of breaking through if they stayed the course.
“It just seemed like we were right on the edge of making a run,” Hines said. “A couple of our losses were by two points. We lost in overtime to Narrows, we lost by three points to Graham and we just had a few close losses where we could’ve easily been 5-1 or 4-2. Keeping them positive and looking ahead was important. We were only six games into the season where we’ve still got 15 more games to play plus tournaments. We reiterated that in practice that we needed to keep plugging along.”
Leading the charge for the Mavericks have been Hines’ daughter Adyson, a walking double-double, and Haley Hunnciutt. Hines averages 12 points and 11.8 rebounds per game while Hunnicutt leads the team in scoring at a 14.4 per game clip.
They’ve been lethal on the defensive end as well, averaging over three steals a game each. The defensive improvement has been evident. In six of their last 11 games the Mavericks have held opposing teams to 40 points or less.
Coach Hines has largely credited the turnaround to the buy in on that end of the floor as well as the contagious atmosphere of success within the school. It’s bred expectations that the team has happily embraced.
“We’ve really worked on our defense and we’ve gotten really good play from our guards defensively and offensively,” Hines said. “Haley Hunnicutt and Mary Beth Meadows, they’re in the top 10 in the state in steals along with Adyson. Lilly Jackson’s our senior leader and she’s kept the team cool-headed the entire time. But I think they understand what we want is to build this team. I think you see the boys team (No. 1 in the Coaches and AP Poll) win too and it’s contagious. They know because they talk to each other in school all the time, they have class together and they sit together at lunch. They know it’s a winning tradition here and they’re wanting to do what the boys are doing. There’s a lot of high expectations for them and now that we’re winning there’s a lot of high expectations for us.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
