Coming off another very successful season which ended in an Area Tournament loss and five returning starters, the Tecumseh Lady Savage Basketball team is setting their sights on a State Tournament berth in March.
The Lady Savages finished with a record of 20-8 last year and were ranked in the top 20 in the state much of the season. The schedule will be anything but easy this year on the road to the playoffs.
“We tried to make the schedule tougher this year,” according to Head Coach Eldon Gentry II. “If we want to make it to the State Tournament, we need to play games that are like playoff games in the regular season. We want to play in highly competitive games.”
It’s not like the schedule last year was easy. “Last year we played seven games against State Tournament teams, and we played teams who won state titles,” said Gentry. In the regular season, the Lady Savages faced McAlester, the 5A champs, Classen, 4A title winners and the 3A champions, Jones.
Tecumseh’s schedule has been adjusted this year to go play against even better teams. The Lady Savages are still in the North Canadian River Conference, but that schedule won’t play every conference team twice in order to open the schedule for other competition. “Our schedule is pretty tough,” the coach stated, “last year was tough but it’s tougher this year.”
The Lady Savages have had multiple
Tecumseh’s Kenzli Warden drives to the basket and makes her shot in the season opener for last season. File Photo scrimmages to prepare for the season, including playing Crossings Christian, Chickasha, Stillwater, Putnam City North, Jenks, Heritage Hall, Deer Creek, Midwest City and Carl Albert.
“We were a little rusty in early scrimmages,” according to Gentry. “We got a late start with full team practices because we had players on the fast pitch team that made it to the State Championship game.”
In fact, two of the five returning starters were on that team. The five starters coming back this year includes four juniors and one senior. Kenzli Warden is the returning senior starter, along with juniors Serenity Jacoway, Jadyn Wilson, Sami Schweighardt and Reagan Berry. Two other seniors, Cadence Oliver and Sadie Boatman bring depth to the Lady Savage roster.
“Depth is a bit of a problem for us. We have low numbers overall and we have some girls dealing with injuries,” Gentry said. “But we’ve got some solid players on the bench that will help us. And, once we get a couple of players healthy we’ll be in good shape.”
Having senior presence on the team is important to every team for leadership and the Lady Savages have good ones with Warden, Boatman and Oliver to lead the way.
“Kenzli makes us go,” Coach Gentry declared, “she can do everything. She can play positions one through five and is the best rebounder on the team as a guard. Sadie is our energy on the team. She comes in every day and does everything we ask her to do. Cadence, we’re hoping to get her healthy and then she’ll be our sniper from outside later in the season. Serenity is a junior and she had a great year and took a giant leap last season. Hopefully, she’ll take another big leap this year.”
When asked about style of play, Coach Gentry had this to say. “Offensively, we’re going to try to play with pace and get the floor spread out and score in transition as much as possible. Defensively, we will mix it up and ac-cording to matchup situations depending on who we’re playing against.”
When asked about expectations, the coach said they go by “The Lady Savage Way.” The Lady Savage way is being a good teammate. Everyone has different roles, but your status is all the same. Team first.
“We want to win every night and we think we are capable of winning every night,” according to Coach Gentry. “We just have to perform the way we know we can, every night. We feel we should be competing to make it to the State Tournament. We’re excited to get going. We’ve b e e n practicing and we’re ready to throw the ball up and play a real game.
The season begins for the Lady Savages this coming Tuesday on the road at Tuttle, a tough test early for the T-Town ladies.
