NEW MADISON – Over the course of the summer, Tri-Village girls basketball coach Brad Gray has seen his team go from average to pretty good.
The Lady Patriots have a 17-4 record this summer, which includes a 6-1 mark last weekend during a home shootout with Anna, Greenon, Houston, Jay County, Milton-Union, Northwestern, Richmond, Stivers, Union City, West Carrollton and West Liberty-Salem. The Patriots’ lone loss of the shootout was a two-point loss to Jay County, which Tri-Village later avenged in a rematch.
“I felt like we performed really well,” Gray said of his team’s play. “I thought at the start of the summer we were a little shaky. I thought our team camp we were I would say average at best. But I think we’ve really got it going. At the end of team camp we started playing pretty well, started gelling. I thought our shootout we were excellent.”
While the results have been good for the Patriots, what Gray is really glad to see is his players starting to understand their roles and gel together as a team.
“The goal of the summer is just really try to define roles, get kids to understand their roles so we can gel a little bit better as a team and then hopefully as we start to enter the season we’re hitting on all cylinders and doing things the right way because we understand what our roles are,” Gray said. “We’re pretty happy right now with the advancement we’re making. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Our kids understand that, but I think our kids are willing to put in the time that they have to put in so we can get better where we need to get better.”
Tri-Village, the defending Cross County Conference champion, is excited about the upcoming season and expecting even better results this upcoming season.
“Our goal is to be playing in mid-March,” Gray said, “and in order for that to happen we’ve got to get better, and our kids understand that.”
