Thinking about the upcoming High School Basketball Season and some of the players from the Girl’s/Boy’s Teams that we will see this year/season

Thinking about some of the girls teams and some of the players and the first names that come to mind when you think about the Guilford County teams and who will be the Top Basketball names this season/year….

Top Name and for sure the tallest player in our area, Elissa Cunane(Northern Guilford HS) and she would rank among the Top Five girls high school basketball players in the state and she is just a junior….Strong DI lock and South Carolina, North Carolina, East Carolina, Western Carolina, Coastal Carolina, any team from Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and beyond would love to have this kid…At 6’5, you can’t miss her and she is a can’t miss prospect and she hardly ever misses her free throws and that is as almost as good as always eating your peas when you sit down at the table….

Another top player in the state is Lashonda Monk, from Southwest Guilford HS…..Could be in line to be the top point guard in the state if she wants it and she is a senior and has earned and paved her way to the top…

When I think of Southwest Guilford, I also think of Tia Medley….Solid prospect…

Northwest Guilford lost Barber, Pointer, Tucker, Moore and more, but the Vikings still have a very tight nucleus with Cayla King, Elizabeth Kitley and Bria Gibbs….King and Kitley just sophomores and Gibbs a junior…..Kitley already hearing from ACC schools and King will be getting that same kind of attention and NWG is not in bad shape, it will just be a different shape/form/personality that they take on this season….

Piedmont Triad 4-A going in, SWG the favorite and NWG looking at second on the way into 2016/2017….

Dudley has one name back that comes back to mind and that is a small person with a big game and large role on this team and that is Tara Johnson….Johnson is the key, she is the spark plug and Dudley will need her to score at least 15 points a game and post in the neighborhood of 7-8 assists a game this season if the Panthers want to maintain the power and their prowess….Some coaches will tell you, “You don’t have to try and do it all”, but in Johnson’s case, there may be some nights when Coach Frank McNeil tells Tara, to go get it done for us and we need you to just take over this game….

From Page, it is always a Pirate four-pack for me, with the two Heard sisters, Roxanne Pfenning and Ava Casper…A lot will be expected from those kids and how the Heard sisters advance their game will be the tell-tell sign of this team…Are they ready to get double-digit scoring numbers every night??? Could well be a necessary part of the “Pirates’ Plan”….

From Grimsley, I just have that one player back that makes the team roll and she is a very tall point guard, or least she was holding down that post last year and what do you need more, the ball-handling or the inside scoring and rebounding??? Sometimes you just have to get the ball across half-court first and Rebecca Little can do that and she can score too..Either she has been playing Rec ball since she was in first grade or she hit the travel league in the second grade, but you can tell “this kid has game”, but she needs the other girls to chip in and help pay for the trip to the playoffs, if the Whirlies are ever going to get there again….

How about that Nichelle Jeffries at Northeast Guilford??? She is still just a junior, but she has hit for 30 or more points in more than 10-15 ball games since she hit the starting lineup two years ago at NEG….Nichelle is a scorer, but she has to make sure that she makes that an every night deal and the key factor is that she needs to hitting for at least 20 ppg every night and must be able to hit for the 20 and it can’t be the sort of thing where she is changing her team’s game by getting her points for the Rams, it must come naturally and if the 20 comes in the course of the game, the 30-point nights will pop up too, when the Rams need them…All must come part of the game plan….

Just right off the top of my head, that are the names that have come back to me the quickest and I am sure that there are others and there will be others out there that need to have their names added to this conversation…..A couple of those young ladies down at Southern Guilford need to get/take their shots and get in here with the others on this list….HP Andrews has a few young women that are with us most years, as the season gets rolling….

We have more and we will add in more as we getting closer to the beginning of the regular season…

On the boy’s side we won’t go through all the formalities, but we will drop a few names off here on you and let’s start or begin with the extremely strong/talented group over at Greensboro Day with JP Moorman, Jordan Perkins, Will Dillard, John Newman and Pearce Landry…That is a lot of basketball talent right there and I almost feel like we need to throw in Alex English, but I have not seen him over there at GDS yet, but with all that talent, they may be playing like Alex English and like the young Mr. German from over Smith too and that would be Mr. German in his younger days…

Speaking of Smith, what about Jalen Gainey, who has quickly become one of the top big men in the state of North Carolina….Hot prospect here, in Jalen Gainey….

Southwest Guilford will be loaded with Langley again this year and that almost sounds like the name of a fish…I just caught a whole big mess of Langley…Or SWG still has a boatload of Langleys, with Kam, Kobe and Keyshaun, plus SWG picked up Brandon Lamberth, one of our favorite players from last year, with that sound and steady work-ethic he brings to the gym each day/night….SWG also has Kaymon Mitchell’s younger brother in the fold, so the Cowboys kids will be OK….

Cowboys kids vs. Northwest Guilford for the Piedmont Triad 4-A Title right??? No-brainer right? NWG has Jalen Spicer, Tre Turner, Thomas Hennigan, Reggie Davis and David Funderburg and that is a mouthful right there…..Off the bench, not sure who is next, but with that five, you might get caught up in watching them take it up-and-down the court and be mesmerized by the way they can run-and-gun and for the Vikings, that is what they call FUN….

SWG vs. NWG in GC/Guilford County and you can go ahead and have them print your tickets, that is the ticket for the Meal Money among the public schools this season and everything else on the public school level may become leftovers, since we are on this cafeteria-based theme….

Dudley has talent, but they will have to put it all together and make it flow….Hendon Hooker, Brion Seagraves, John Zellous, Isaac Brunson, even freshman Chris Zellous, the Panthers have the athletes, but when football is over will they be able to convert the pigskin in roundball skin…Football is pigskin, baseball is horsehide or cowhide…Remember the old saying, “Hide, hide, the cow’s outside….Like cowhide, but what is the texture and coating of the basketball composed of???

Page could well have Will Jones returning for his senior season after football is over and not sure who joins him, but Page has some quick unknowns out there making the transition work last year….Grimsley lost Aaron Wiggins to Wesleyan and he is one heck of a talent and from that point on for Grimsley without Wiggins, I am not sure who is next, but are about to find out soon…Maybe Will Rowe is about ready to light it up over there, like his dad Jerri Rowe used to do down in South Carolina….

Man we have hit a lot of teams today and I wish I would have got on this train earlier this morning, because I know my main man Jack Emerick is gone from Northern Guilford and we used to love to watch Jack bring his lunch pail to work and then go to work on the inside and make the lane, “his domain”…..

I can’t tell who all is back from last year’s very late-season surging club, but Southern Guilford has head coach Evan Fancourt and that is good enough for 10-15 wins right then, right there and right now…..Eastern Guilford should be OK, but I can not tell you who coach Joe Spinks will be calling on for Wildcat productivity….Northeast has been hurting in recent years and it might be time for the Rams to return to respectability…

Some story for a lot of our teams….Looking for respectability…After the boys from NWG and SWG we have a great divide…

Jalen Seegars still working with High Point Christian Academy and always hope that kid does big things…Knew him back in the early days, right after Calvin Murphy and Mack Calvin came through town….And if any of these kids can start shooting like George Lehman call me quick…

That is a quick high school basketball appetizer and don’t look it up or look back, this is the Raw Version and we will edit and add-on where and when necessary…

Enjoy and employ current and former basketball players from the outdoors and the indoors…..

*****Sort of a load and now time to hit the road and not sure if any team in this state is going to be able to keep up with the Greensboro Day School Bengals this season…The GDS men are going to WIN a lot of games in 2016-2017……*****
+++++Maybe Providence down in Charlotte will give them a run, we will see…..+++++

One thought on “Thinking about the upcoming High School Basketball Season and some of the players from the Girl’s/Boy’s Teams that we will see this year/season

  1. Andy I think you’ll be kinda surprised with the talent around town other than the private schools I know Wiggins left grimsley but I think they’ll be decent as well as Dudley Smith HPA as well as northwest and southwest

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