Lady Cavaliers enjoy productive summer
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, July 13, 2016
HOGANSVILLE – He wants to speed things up.
As the 2015-2016 basketball season progressed, the Callaway Lady Cavaliers became more of a half-court team, and while they had their share of success, head coach Deyano Martin figures playing the game at a slower pace isn’t the best thing for the team.
So during the team’s summer workouts, Martin has been focusing on pushing the pace, on getting the players to get up and down the court.
“I know what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to speed it back up,” Martin said on Tuesday during a youth football camp at the school. “We started playing slow. We need to go back to doing what I did when I first got here.”
Martin said the main reason he slowed things down last season was to take advantage of the presence of sophomore post player Chyna Cameron.
While Cameron had a strong season and provided matchup problems for most of Callaway’s opponents, Martin believes a quicker pace is the way to go.
“We have to go back to playing fast,” Martin said. “There’s too much thinking in the half court.”
The players who were able to participated in summer workouts throughout June, and Martin was pleased with the turnout, knowing how many different directions everyone is pulled in this time of year.
“It went pretty good,” Martin said. “We had 11, 12 sometimes. It varies. We had some playing soccer, and AAU basketball. But it went fairly decent.”
The Lady Cavaliers are coming off a season where they finished second in the regular season in Region 5-AAA, and they placed third in the region tournament before falling to Hart County in the opening round of the state tournament.
Martin has some key players to replace, including senior Tanesha Johnson, who will be playing college basketball next season.
There are plenty of talented players returning, though, including the 6-foot-1 Cameron, who Martin believes is ready to elevate her game even further.
“She’s getting better,” Martin said. “I think she’s getting there. I think she understands what she needs to do. I think she’s doing a lot better job of being aggressive. I think the light may have come on this summer.”
Reach Kevin Eckleberry at (706) 884-7311 or on Twitter @lagrangesports