Andrews – As the Lady Wildcats’ season came to an end with an 82-57 loss to Murphy in the Big Smoky Mountain Conference Tournament, several players left the court in tears.
The Lady Wildcats took steps forward this winter, even if it only led to three wins compared to two last year. But those emotions were proof to head coach Tim Wood that what he’s doing is working.
“It means that they care,” Wood said. “It means they’re passionate about it. It means they’ve bought in, and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
When Wood was hired in May 2022, his goal was to change the culture of the Andrews girls basketball program. He knew it wasn’t going to be an overnight fix. The Lady Wildcats haven’t won a conference game since the 2018-19 season and were routinely run out of the gym last year.
So despite having a team with only one senior and mainly freshmen and sophomores, Wood set the goal this year as being competitive. Andrews (3-22 overall) was able to do that in both games against Murphy (11-13) this year before the Lady Bulldogs put both games away in the second half.
In this one, Murphy started off hot and didn’t look back. The Lady Bulldogs hit shots against the Lady Wildcats 1-3-1 zone, and got plenty of points off offensive rebounds.
After Andrews went on an 8-2 run to cut the Murphy lead to 15-11, the Lady Bulldogs answered with a 13-3 run and were never threatened again. Addie Johnson led the way with 22 points for Murphy, while Julia Dockery had a career-high 20.
“Tim’s doing an excellent job with Andrews,” Lady Bulldogs head coach Gary Thompson said. “He’s got some ways to go but he’s got them on the right track, and we really have not matched up well against them this year. I thought our girls came into tournament time with a different mindset, and it showed up on the floor.”
The Lady Bulldogs led by as many as 38 points. Despite the big deficit, Wood didn’t see any quit in his team.
Andrews competed until the final whistle, continuing to run sets on the offensive end and force some turnovers with its press on defense. It obviously wasn’t enough to change the final outcome, but still reflective of the growth the Lady Wildcats showed this year.
Andrews had a running clock put on it three times this year, which happens when a team trails by 40 points. It’s not a big thing to celebrate, but still better than the 12 times the Lady Wildcats lost by 40 or more points last year. It’s small things like that that encourage Wood about the direction of the program, even when he knows how far they have to go.
After coming on too late to set up scrimmages and skill development sessions, Wood is ready to hit the ground running with that in the offseason. He thinks his team has a good idea of what he wants them to do. Now it’s about continuing to master the fundamentals and showing how the little things turn out to be big when it comes to learning how to win.
“The effort’s there,” Wood said. “The belief, the buy-in’s there. Now we’ve just got to build a stronger foundation as far as fundamentals go. When we do that, we will start winning.”