For two years in a row, the Cassville girls basketball team has been at exactly .500, and with a few key pieces graduating this year, the team aims to keep pace in coming seasons.
Clayton Bagby, Cassville girls basketball coach, said when he started the job last summer, goals were tough to set. Finishing at 14-14 was good, he said, but there is room to improve.
“Finishing .500 in high school basketball is hard, so I am proud of what we accomplished,” he said. “We had many games that could have went the other way early that we were able to gut out. I would like to have seen us be more successful towards the end of the season and in conference, and trying to improve there will be a goal for next season.”
The Lady Wildcats’ season ended on March 2 at the hands of Aurora, 46-26.
“They were able to cause some turnovers and convert them on the other side,” Bagby said. “They made a couple of defensive adjustments [in the second half] and face guarded a couple of our girls on offense, and we struggled to score at that point.
“Aurora is a good team offensively with multiple girls that can shoot the ball and cause matchup troubles. We did a much better job guarding and contesting shots than the previous game and did a better job in defensive transition to make them work in the half court.”
Bagby said one thing that bit Cassville in that game and through the season is a point he plans to emphasize in the future.
“Going forward and into next year, we will need to focus on taking care of the ball and doing a better job handling pressure to limit other teams chances and increase our opportunities, as well as becoming a better overall offensive team and developing players that can score multiple ways,” he said. “We gave the other teams too many extra opportunities and is something we will have to improve going forward to win games later in the year come conference and district time.”
It’s the second consecutive year of 14-14 records, and Bagby said that’s not all that stayed the same.
“Statistically, we were about identical overall on defense and offense as the year before, so we had a number of players improve individually that allowed us to make up the losses from the year before and improve overall on defense,” he said.
With the ups and downs, there was no shortage of excitement over the year “We had a number of exciting games,” Bagby said. “We won twice in overtime, the most exciting of which was a comeback against Miami (Okla.) in a heated game. We also had a third-place tourney finish at Crane and second at Southwest, which included an exciting fourth-quarter comeback against Pierce City.”
Leading the Lady Wildcats through those successes was an experienced group of seniors Bagby is sad to see graduate.
“It will be hard to replace 10 years of varsity experience between the three seniors,” he said. “Marianne McCrackin was a four-year starter who a number of girls looked to for leadership. She was also our leading scorer and point guard and turned in multiple 20-point efforts late in the season. Ashylnn Bryan is probably the toughest player I have ever coached, and we believe played the last two games with a broken wrist. She usually had the role of defensive stopper for the other teams best players and was an excellent rebounder.
“Maci Barton did an excellent job in her role and stepping in and giving good defensive minutes and was a very good rebounder. All will be hard to replace.”
Heavy on underclassmen, Bagby said the future of the program is full of energy and effort.
“I feel like we have a number of girls that want to be contributors at the varsity level, or contribute more than they did this year and are willing to put the work in to do so,” he said. “There will be a lot of time available so we should have some healthy competition for that playing time. We must continue to improve as a team and individually. We are taking big hits to graduation on the offensive and defensive side and we will be asking multiple girls to step up and fill roles next year and will be considered a young team.”
