The Lady Patriots basketball team is looking to bounce back from a 6-18 season last year, led by five seniors and seven freshmen who are expected to work together effectively.
Coming off their first losing season (6-18) since 2019-20, the Oglethorpe County girls basketball team is looking to bounce back, led by strong freshman and senior classes.
“We only had one senior last year, so we have a lot of the same kids returning, which means they got a whole year of playing under their belt,” coach Brianna Dickens said.
This year’s team boasts five seniors and seven freshmen among the 16 players on the roster. The seniors are Elin Turner, Marin Sampson, Carlie Gabriel, Jaliyah Turner and Ansley Paul.
The group of seniors has experienced both region championships and state tournament runs, so Dickens said she’s “trying to get them to take those experiences and the time and the minutes that they have played and kind of just pour into these freshmen as well.”
Turner has been with Dickens and the Patriots for all four years of her high school career.
“Me and some of the other seniors have talked about how we definitely have to be leaders this year, just leading by example,” she said. “Being a good teammate and hyping them up, keeping them up even when they might be struggling.”
The Patriots opened this season with a 61-27 loss at Franklin County last Friday.
“We know there’s a lot of room for improvement, things that we can work on and control to make us better,” Dickens said. “We had practice (Monday) and got after it, and really tried to hone in on a few things that we can improve on.”
Oglethorpe County will play Franklin County again Thursday at home, and Dickens looks to make quick adjustments to prepare to play the same team twice in one week.
“We’re watching a lot of film; we’re studying,” Turner said. “They ran this one play where they screened like 20 million times, and we kept not getting around it. So at practice, we’ve already been working around that screen, just studying basically all their plays, so we know where they’re gonna go, so we’re already prepared.”
Despite the season-opening defeat, Dickens remains optimistic.
“The outcome wasn’t what we wanted, but just kind of hoping that we learned some things,” she said. “That first time you go against another team, it always gives you those things that you may not see in practice every day going against each other.”
The Patriots have made the playoffs five straight years, Dickens said, and they’re hoping to extend that streak with the new GHSA playoff seeding changes.
“Now, even all of these non-region games play a factor,” she said. “So just knowing the importance of every game, the 12 region games that we play matter, because we want to win the region and we want to compete for the region championship.”
In the new GHSA playoff format this season, only the region champion is guaranteed a playoff spot. This differs from the previous system, where the top four teams in each region earned playoff berths.
“We just have to execute and do the small little things that add up over the course of a 32-minute game,” Dickens said. “Just getting back in the groove and seeing, especially with single A and power rankings, every game matters.”