Adairsville’s Sammie Frazier raises his hands in hope of getting the ball while defending his territory against a fellow teammate during recent scrimmages.
“[Our] effort was good for three quarters. However, it is a four quarter game. Pepperell hit some shots late in the game that made the difference. We got frustrated and could not recover,” said first-year head coach Kent Howard.
Howard said his boys played hard overall, but he was less than impressed with the shots his team took and the free throw percentage — 44 percent — for the night.
Howard has been a part of the Adairsville basketball coaching staff for the past five years, beginning as the boys’ assistant coach.
“I accepted the assistant boys basketball coach position at Adairsville five years ago. Jacob Travis was the coach at the time; he had only been there for a year. He encouraged me to join him to assist him in building the program,” Howard said.
After three years Howard moved to girls’ head coach, and is now leading the boys after Travis took another position.
This season the Tigers have three key returning players — 6-foot senior guard Austin Greenfield, 6-foot-5 senior guard Roderic King and 5-foot-9 junior point guard Tyler Washington.
Greenfield is a returning starter that Howard said is a good player who will be “looked upon to score more”. King returns as the team’s leading scorer from last season and Howard said he is expected to have a big season for Adairsville, Washington, one of the shortest players on the team, is “small but savvy, smart, a leader, and will be relied upon to handle pressure and manage the game,” the coach said.
King is the top scorer for the team as he dropped 25 points against Pepperell. Sammie Frazier, a 6-foot-4 junior post player, had the second highest total of the night with nine points.
With the season just getting started the Tigers have come up with five team goals, one of which requires the players to keep their academics in order. The others include winning a region 5-AAA title, advancing at least to the second round of the GHSA tournament, winning all home games and at least 17 games overall, and losing no players at Christmas due to academic ineligibility, Howard said.
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