By Gene Stanley/Sports Correspondent
When Jeremy Brooks hypes up his team, you know there’s a chance for something special.
After all, the Gadsden City High girls basketball coach has had some very good teams.
In all but one of his six seasons since the inception of the school, Brooks has led the Titans to the Class 6A Northeast Regional Tournament. And Gadsden City has won its area championship in all but one season.
“I think we’ve got a lot of potential as we progress,” he said. “We’re still young, but we have some experience.”
Brooks gave two examples of this – eighth-grader Brooke Burns and sophomore Takara Blount already have a season’s experience under their belts.
Then there’s the other end of the spectrum.
“We’ve got some juniors and seniors who are either playing for the first time or are in their first year on the varsity,” Brooks said.
“We have to treat them the same as any other new players, even though they’re older.”
Thus far in the early going, the Titans have lost to Mountain Brook and Sparkman – two of the best teams in the state.
“We’re doing about what I expected so far,” Brooks said. “Playing that type of teams – even when we lose – helps us down the road. We’ve got to learn from these losses and move on.”
Brooks sees some good perimeter shooting on this team, calling it one of the better perimeter teams he’s coached.
Meanwhile, the presence of two 6-2 post players in Chelsea Knight and Dajia Williams will keep the opposing defenses from playing nothing but the perimeter.
“We’ve got the potential to be very balanced,” Brooks said. “And that goes for our scoring. We don’t have a superstar but we have a lot of girls who can score. We’re liable to have a different scoring leader every game.”
Even with a very talented roster, Brooks doesn’t look for a cakewalk of a season, saying that there will be some “bumps in the road.”
“But we’ve got to keep learning and improving,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of room to grow and hopefully we’ll bloom into a good team by season’s end.”
The Titans have won 32 straight area games and open area play tonight (Dec. 7) at Area 9 rival Oxford.