By Michael Kinney
The Moore American
MOORE — The Moore girls basketball team ended the first quarter with a 68 point loss to Southmoore. It was the biggest loss of the season for the young Lions.
However, as coach Tim Gray has tried to do throughout his tenure at MHS, he chose to use the loss as a teaching moment.
“The score was very lopsided,” Gray said. “Unfortunately if you are in sports long enough you will have games like that somewhere along the road. We look at trying to let the girls know that they must come back and work hard. It’s not how many times you get knocked down, its how many times you get back up, that counts.”
The Lions will not get a chance to respond until after Christmas vacation when they travel to the Chickasha Tournament Jan. 10. Until then the team is striving to gradually improve each day.
“We are improving,” Gray said. “We watch film constantly as a staff and evaluate our progress. We are getting better at the things that we can do as a team.”
Even though the teams sits at 1-8 and are riding a five game losing streak, they have shown improvements in certain areas, according to the coaching staff.
“We have been able to run several types of defenses this year, which we have not done in the past,” Gray said. “Teams have to scout us to see what we are doing. We have also been able to play our younger players quite a bit and get some extra game time for them. Obviously we need to work on our offensive skills, we need to be more aggressive and attack more. “
Last year the Lions were a one-woman team on offense with Amanda Patterson doing most of the scoring. This season, Patterson is still doing most of the damage, but others are contributing more.
“Aaliyah Crump and Caitlyn Hall are working and playing very hard each and every day,” Gray said. “Breyenne Jones, had waking pneumonia the night against Southmoore and she has really started to find her game.”
The wins could still be tough to get in the second half of the season for MHS. But Gray doesn’t envision his squad not going out and trying to compete each night.
“Anyone who knows basketball knows how tough it is to keep coming out day in and day out and keep working hard to improve skills and team,” Gray said. “But this group does that every day. We don’t fight, we don’t argue, the chemistry is good, they have fun working out together. Eventually all good coaches know that, that particular aspect will pay off in the long run. We will keep doing things by the book, working fundamentals, learning the game, watching film, running hard, and it will make us a better team in the long run.
“We have faith, that there is no short cuts in life,” he continued. “You just got to put in the time and effort. We have some of the best kids in the state here at Moore and they will overachieve in life. The game that really counts.”
