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| PHCC women's basketball |
Members of the PHCC women’s basketball team are (front row, from left): Marisol Morris, Monica Colter, Tonneka Broadnax, Tarshaye White, Tyeshia Elliot, Kendra Allen, Evany Dickerson, Tareka Cesar, (second row, from left) head coach Tony Jones, Andrea Barbour, Jasmine Alston, Precious Mayberry, Andrea Hauser, Sonia Johnson and assistant coach David Draper. (Kenny Webster photo) |
Sunday, November 1, 2009
By JOHNNY BUCK - Bulletin Sports Editor
The Lady Patriots don’t have the luxury of easing into their first season of junior college basketball.
Patrick Henry Community College’s women’s team will debut today on the road against Louisburg College, the No. 8 team in the nation. It will mark the first time the Lady Patriots have competed in the National Junior College Athletic Association and the first time Tony Jones has patrolled the sidelines as a college coach.
Jones, who has assembled a roster of 12 players since being hired a year ago, is hoping to be competitive this season and maybe even surprise some people.
“I’ve never coached any team — basketball, football, anything — where we didn’t go into it thinking we were going to win the game. So that’s the mentality we have going into the game. After that, we set goals game by game,” said Jones, 47, who coached Carlisle School’s girls basketball program to five state titles in 10 years from 1998 until last year. “You have to play every possession like it’s your last possession, and I try to tell kids that you have to play like that if you want to be successful.”
Jones plans to push the tempo with plenty of full-court presses and half-court traps and hopes to get at least 60 percent of the team’s points off transition baskets.
“As a first-year team, of course we’re gonna be smaller than a lot of the teams we play,” he said. “So we’re gonna have to rely on depth and using as many players as possible to play our style of ball, which is always going to be up-tempo type basketball.”
The roster is impressive, especially considering Jones had to compile it from scratch.
The biggest recruit is Andrea Barbour, a former Virginia Tech player who made the Atlantic Coast Conference all-freshman team in the 2007-08 season after averaging 15 points per game. She was also a McDonald’s All-American coming out of Charlottesville High School in 2007.
“She’s now being recruited by every major school in the country from here (PHCC), and she hasn’t even played a game yet,” said Jones of the combo guard. “She’s being recruited by Rutgers, Louisville, Kentucky, Clemson, you know, it goes on and on and on. She is that talented.”
Barbour will be joined by high school teammate Kendra Allen in the backcourt, a player Jones labeled as a pure point guard.
“She’s just the consummate point guard. She can handle the ball, she distributes well, and she also shoots the 3 well,” he said. “She was a big recruit.”
Jones will put two more perimeter players on the court to begin today’s game. Andrea Hauser, a 5-foot-10 shooting guard who transferred from Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, N.C., is expected to start. Evany Dickerson is also expected to hit the court for the opening tip. Dickerson led her Heritage High School team to a state title two years ago, according to Jones.
Precious Mayberry (6-foot-0, Memphis, Tenn.) will patrol the lane as Jones’ starting center.
“Precious is extremely strong, very quick for her size,” said Jones. “She runs the court more like a swing player than a post player, so she brings size and quickness to the court.”
Barbour had numerous options when picking an NJCAA program, but she expressed no regrets about going with the Lady Patriots.
“We’re athletic. We’re not the biggest team, but we’re fast. We still can play the up-tempo game,” she said. “We’ve got players that can shoot. We’ve got players that are athletic, and then we’ve got players that can take it to the hoop.”
Jones plans to use a rotation of eight or nine players. He said Jasmine Alston (5-10 forward, Washington, D.C.), Tyeshia Elliot (5-5 guard, Washington, D.C.), Tarshaye White (6-1 center, Baltimore, Md.) and Tika Sizar (5-9 guard, Brooklyn, N.Y.) will get plenty of playing time and could become potential starters.
“We have just a gamut of players who were stars on their high school teams. So to be a first-year team, I think we were extremely fortunate to have these young ladies to sign with us,” said Jones. “But you know, it’s not a hard sell to sell PH to a kid. You have to sell yourself and your basketball program, ... but as far as academics and the support system here at PH, that wasn’t a hard sell at all.”
David Draper will serves as Jones’ assistant. Draper has extensive prep experience; most recently, he was the head coach of Martinsville High School’s girls basketball team in the 2007-08 season.
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