SHOOTING DRILLS – Halifax County High School’s Russell White fired up a jump shot as he and his fellow Comets players worked through a shooting drill during a Saturday morning practice session. The Comets have been hard at work preparing for this week’s pair of pre-season scrimmage games and their Wednesday, November 26 season opener against Magna Vista High School. (G-V Photo/Joe Chandler)
Comets Face First Tests This Week
By Joe Chandler
Sports Editor
Time is quickly flying by for the Halifax County High School varsity boys basketball team.
The Comets, under second-year head coach Lynn Ramage, are in the midst of a critical week as they prepare for their pair of pre-season tests.
Halifax County will face its first test Thursday when it squares off against neighboring Dan River High School. On Saturday, the Comets will face another neighboring team, Bluestone High School, in what will be the team’s final exam prior to the start of the new season.
After Saturday’s scrimmage, the Comets will have only two days next week to prepare for their season opener, a Wednesday, November 26 road contest against Magna Vista High School in Ridgeway.
“These two scrimmages are very critical,” Ramage said of this week’s pair of pre-season outings.
“We have to move in a hurry. We have to be ready (to play) by November 26. We have the first game that night and then we get another week off before having to play Person High School in back-to-back games. That’s going to be tough.”
While time to prepare for the two scrimmages and the November 26 season opener is becoming a factor, Ramage said his team has made pretty good progress thus far.
“I think we will have our defense intact by Thursday,” Ramage said.
“We will have much of our offensive half-court sets ready. We will have our side out-of-bounds and our zone offense ready. We will put in a press.
“The big thing,” Ramage continued, “is that we want to over there to Dan River and get a feel for how well we do against somebody else. I just hope we play hard. That’s all I’m really trying to do right now, get them to play hard and to try to adjust to whatever type of situations they (Dan River) throw at us.”
Ramage pointed out that a great deal of the emphasis in practice has centered on basic fundamental skills.
“We’ve been working on a bunch of fundamental things to counteract what a team is going to do,” Ramage remarked.
“Every team is going to do certain things that will be similar. They will down-screen, they’re going to set lateral screens and they are going to set pick-and-rolls. What we want our players to be able to do is recognize those things and be able to adjust and attack their opponents’ fundamentals with a correct fundamental. If they (the opposing team) run a down screen, we’re going to do what we need to do to defend that down screen.”
In terms of progress, Ramage says this season’s Comets team is a little ahead of where last season’s team was at this same point in time. One of the big factors in that, Ramage noted, rests in the conditioning aspect.
“One thing that has helped us is that the kids came out and conditioned during the fall,” Ramage said.
“Now, we don’t have to spend so much time on conditioning. From that respect, we are ahead of where we were last year. Our kids played six games in two days during a team camp in Lynchburg. They got tired, they we were able to do a few things because of the conditioning factor.”
Ramage said he plans to use Thursday’s scrimmage against Dan River and Saturday’s scrimmage against Bluestone to evaluate his players and get a firm grasp on the areas where his team needs the most work.
“We’re going to evaluate our talent and see who plays well under game pressure,” Ramage remarked.
“We’re doing things in practice, which is good. But, we need to see who can do what when the lights are on, when the shot goes up in the game who is going to stand there and watch and who is going to box out on the boards.”
Another area Ramage will be looking at in the two scrimmages is how well his players can limit the opposing team’s second-chance shot opportunities.
“We understand that we are going to have to do some things to limit second shot opportunities,” he pointed out.
“We’re going to have to focus on that. When we went to the team camp in Lynchburg, we saw we could force teams into taking bad shots. You can work hard to force them (opposing players) to take bad shots, but if they get secondary shots, it defeats the purpose of making them take bad shots.”
Halifax County High School’s varsity boys basketball team will play a 22-game schedule this season. The Comets will open their season on Wednesday, November 26, against Magna Vista High School in Ridgeway.
Their second and third games of the season will be against neighboring border rival Person High School of Roxboro, N.C. The Comets will travel to Roxboro, N.C. to face Person High School on Friday, December 5 and will face the Rockets here in a return engagement on Tuesday, December 9 in what will be the team’s home opener.