CHAPMAN TIP-OFF CLASSIC: New MA girls team makes successful debut
By TIM GAYLE
The much-anticipated debut of the Montgomery Academy girls’ basketball team went just about as expected.
The Eagles (1-0) had no trouble in beating Class 1A Loachapoka 62-16, but looked like a team still searching for its identity in Monday’s game.
“It’s like I told them, I think we’ve got a long way to go but they were trying to do some of the things we’ve worked on,” first-year coach Reg Mantooth said. “I think they were pretty confident in what we were trying to run, but you really don’t know until you get in a game. I think as we go along they’ll get better and better at what we’re trying to do, but a long way to go.”
Montgomery Academy will face a Class 6A opponent today at 1 p.m. in the second round of the Coach Larry Chapman Foundation Tip-Off Classic, but the Eagles return four starters from last year’s team that reached the regional finals and add both Mantooth, a veteran coach who spent 23 of the past 25 years at Fort Dale Academy, and AISA Player of the Year Chloe Johnson.
Johnson, not surprisingly, stepped in and led the Eagles in scoring with 14 games in her first game in a Montgomery Academy uniform.
“I was proud of the way she took charge,” senior forward Ann Cobern Chapman said. “She’s calling all the plays and if she saw someone in the wrong spot, she’ll tell us where to go. She’s very respectful about it and very encouraging. For me, I didn’t start playing basketball until the eighth grade, so there’s still stuff I’m figuring out and it’s nice to have her come in and be nice and help me know the game better.”
MA got a first-half spark from Leighton Robertson, who scored eight of her 13 points in the second quarter as the Eagles used a 17-2 run to grab a 32-8 halftime lead. Gabby Ramirez added a couple of perimeter shots in the third quarter and finished with 11 points, while Chapman added eight. Nine of the 10 players who saw action scored.
“We’re going to play a lot of people anyway, but it’s always good to get everybody in there and let them play different positions, different groups together,” Mantooth said. “Especially this time of year when I don’t know them in game-type situations, either. I just know what I’ve seen in practice.”
Jireh Ray hit a pair of 3-pointers in the second half to lead Loachapoka (2-4) with eight points. The Indians return to action in the Tip-Off Classic on Tuesday at 1 p.m. as well.
For Mantooth, Monday’s game offered an opportunity to experiment with different groupings. The team was quarantined for some of the summer and missed out on the opportunity to work out together, so the new head coach is still learning about the potential of his team but Chapman liked what she saw in the season opener.
“I saw that our team is a lot faster than we show in practice,” Chapman said. “When we’re scrimmaging against each other, we’re not as aggressive with each other as we should be, but out there I saw people being scrappy and fighting for the ball and giving 100 percent and I was really proud of how fast we were playing.”