‘They don’t have to wait.’ Young Lafayette girls’ team looking for success now.
With no seniors on its roster, it would be understandable if a team like Lafayette chalked this odd, halting, COVID-19 marred season up to experience and as fuel for next year.
But that’s not how Lafayette girls’ basketball coach Allison Tate Denton thinks — not even for a second.
“I see what the future has, but I want success, now. And I want it for the girls, now,” Tate Denton said after the Generals’ 55-26 win over Lexington Christian on Saturday. “Because it’s there. They can have it. They don’t have to wait.
“We think we have a shot, just like anybody else. And if we didn’t think that way every year, I don’t need to be coaching.”
Key players
Lafayette (7-4) is led by versatile 6-1 junior forward Anaya Brown, its top scorer and rebounder with a double-double average of 17.5 points and 14.2 rebounds per game.
“She can do everything. She can shoot the three, she can drive. She can make free throws. She’s got post moves,” Tate Denton said. “She’s going to be a great college ball player somewhere. … She makes everybody else around her better because of the attention she draws.”
Lafayette’s other major contributors include 5-10 junior Olivia Cathers, who averages 9.1 points per game; sophomore guard Kiley Noble, who exploded for 29 points against Bryan Station earlier this season; junior guard Catherine Jacobs, who grabbed five steals to go with seven points and four assists against LCA; and junior guards Lauren Walton and Gracyn Grantz.
“I think we’re making good progress,” Brown said. “Everybody’s coming together and playing as a team.”
That has come despite two COVID-19 stoppages this year and losing three days of practice last week because of weather.
“We’ve had so many stops and goes and stops and goes, and I’m just proud of them for coming out here and doing what they did today,” Tate Denton said. “At this point, we should be getting ready for a district tournament, and we’ve still got games left to play, so it’s a little strange.”
If anything, Tate Denton says the uncertainty of this season creates even more urgency to seize the moment. With all the stops and starts, it’s difficult to gauge how good any opponent is or will be when they line up on the other side of the court.
“Of any year, this is really the year where you better believe you can win, because you don’t know what’s going to happen to that team that you’re going to be competing against.”
Toughness test
Lafayette has an important stretch coming up, including scheduled 43rd District games against Lexington Catholic on Monday, Tates Creek on Wednesday and a return engagement with Paul Laurence Dunbar the following week.
The Generals have lost to Dunbar and LexCath, as well as Somerset and Madison Southern. Those have been hard lessons, especially against a solid Eagles team they led at halftime and trailed by just one at the end of the third quarter before struggling mightily to a 52-36 defeat.
“We just have to make smarter passes, stop turning the ball over and start getting the ball to the open player,” Brown said of the Madison Southern loss.
“We also learned to be more physical,” Noble added. “That team was way more physical than us.”
Lafayette needs a more determined edge, said Tate Denton, who last led the Generals to the 11th Region finals in 2017 and the Sweet 16 in 2014.
“We have to stop playing so soft,” she said “We can be sweet, little girls outside the lines, but when that ball is going up, we have to change who we are.”
Tate Denton noted toughness isn’t just a basketball trait.
“They have to be competitors, and they have to fight,’ she added. “Don’t be the first to get shoved down. You have to make people fear playing you, and that’s not just basketball. You don’t get shoved around in life. That was our lesson after that. Take basketball out of this equation, right now. Stand for something and figure it out, and then you go fight for whatever you believe in.”
Highlights
This story was originally published February 14, 2021 at 12:11 PM.
