The Greenwood Lady Bulldogs’ basketball team opened their 2017-18 season last Thursday with a non-conference home win over Class 4A Prairie Grove. The contest was a benefit game sanctioned by the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA) to raise money for the organization’s catastrophe insurance fund.
“Some schools do it and some don’t,” explained Coach Reeves. “It just [provides] a scrimmage game to let team’s see what they need to work on. The school gets the concessions, but the [gate] money goes to the AAA. It doesn’t count against your [regular season] game total, and it doesn’t have to be the first game of the year, but that’s when it benefits us the most.”
The visitors were clearly outclassed and outplayed by the Lady Bulldogs, who had the privilege of playing their first game on the newly refurbished floor at H.B. Stewart Arena under new LED lights and the grandeur of the recently installed giant (10’ x 33’) scoreboard on the home end of the facility. Another new but much smaller scoreboard adorns the opposite end of the court.
“Our administration and school board have done a lot to get the arena renovated,” said Reeves. “It’s about 20 years old. The floor looks great, and the scoreboards are the best in the state. The arena is still one of the best in the state. It looks great and I know our kids are excited. I know our school and community are proud of it. Ours’ looks better than everyone else’s.”
As for last week’s action, a junior varsity contest preceded the main event. In the varsity game, the Lady Bulldogs started the scoring with a three-pointer and an early 5-0 lead, and never looked back.
Prairie Grove had just one field goal in the first quarter and trailed 9-6 after eight minutes. Coach Reeves subbed generously throughout the game, sometimes sending in five new players at a time, highlighting perhaps his team’s greatest strength – overall depth.
Another trey, this one by junior Kyiah Julian, opened the second period as Greenwood rolled to a 34-14 advantage at the half, the final bucket coming on a layup by fiery freshman Ally Sockey.
Sockey fouled out in the third quarter as the GHS girls played very aggressive defense, leading to numerous whistles by the officiating crew, but also to a lot of Prairie Grove turnovers and greater scoring opportunities for Greenwood. The Lady Bulldogs led 55-22 after three quarters and cleared the bench in the fourth period while coasting to the 28-point victory.
“I thought we played hard and got after it,” said Coach Reeves about the game. “We got up and down the floor and played with a lot of enthusiasm and passion. The effort was always there.”
As for the excessive fouls, the coach said, “That was the first game, so we’ll settle down a little bit and stop being quite so aggressive where we don’t foul too much. But that’s what happens usually in the first game. It will get better as we go along.
“We played last night like we’ve been practicing,” he added. “The first game of the year always has our most fouls. We have to adjust to how the game is being called. We’ll figure that out. We’ll have to play a little bit smarter, but there’s nothing wrong with hustling,” he said.
“We shot [the ball] a lot, rebounded well, [and] we pushed the ball [well]. As a coach, I want us to make every shot, but we [hit] a lot of them. Our shooting is going to be there some nights, and some nights it’s not. But as long as we’re giving great effort, that [overcomes] a lot of stuff. We [also] played a lot of kids,” said Reeves, referring to his deep bench.
The Lady Bulldogs traveled to Class 7A Bentonville this past Tuesday night for a junior varsity and varsity doubleheader. Results were not available at press time. It was the first of several games Coach Reeves has scheduled against higher classification teams like Fort Smith Northside, Springdale, Fayetteville, and Rogers, among others.
The GHS girls will host Fort Smith Northside on Thursday night, with the junior varsity game slated to begin at 5 p.m., followed by the varsity contest. The Greenwood senior high boys will also play their first game of the season against Waldron after the girls’ contest, starting around 7 p.m.