Christmas and New Years are in the rear-view mirror but any rust the North Sunflower Academy Rebels basketball teams may have accumulated will be run off this week.
With three home games – Monday, Tuesday and Thursday – the Rebels literally hit the floor running. On Monday the Rebels took on Humphreys Academy in a makeup game. That was followed by a conference clash with DeSoto on Tuesday and tonight the Rebels face off against Marvell Academy from Arkansas.
Monday’s matchup with Humphreys Academy saw the JV boys pull out a 25-19 win while the boys varsity fell 52-37. Head Coach Essie Thomas’ varsity team has been hit with variations of the flu causing her to lean on JV players stepping up more this week.
“I limited some of my starters in the JV game because I only had three starters for the high school team,” Coach Thomas said. “It was a good defensive game and I got to see more from our other players.”
The varsity boys were missing Dakota Dawson and Chandler Hayes who are out sick.
“We were shooting ourselves in the foot – not capitalizing on plays and missing a lot of assignments,” she said. “Defensively, we got beat. In the fourth quarter they started to wake up. For Parker Beck and Jacob Henley, it’s been a trying year. They are used to popping three’s everywhere but this year they aren’t falling like they should. We are trying to get them into the rhythm of understanding that if they aren’t hitting them, they need to drive to the basket.”
Coach Thomas brought in some older players to help hone the team’s practice over the Christmas break.
“We wanted to get that rough feel and play against players who were way better,” Coach Thomas said. “Hopefully, they’ve got their New Year’s nerves out of the way and will play better.”
On the girls’ side, head coach Jimmy McGregor’s teams have had a rough New Year’s start. Coach has been sick and the scoreboard has left the Rebels a bit under the weather as well. According to Coach McGregor, the JV girls lost to Humphreys 43-16 and the varsity fell 56-14. Their outings against DeSoto on Tuesday were tough as well. A 46-14 JV loss was followed by a 41-21 varsity loss according to the first year NSA head coach.
“We (Varsity) played pretty good against DeSoto,” he said. “But the JV didn’t play very well. We’re in our conference run now but each of our girls’ teams are 0-3 in the conference. We’ll play each school twice.”
North Sunflower’s posted schedule includes hosting Calhoun on Tuesday January 14 and then traveling to Delta Academy on Thursday January 16.
