Why not give these Tiger teams a chance?

By Todd Wills

November 17, 2008 11:56 pm

— Face it, if you’re anything like me, basketball season has always been a bridge from football season to baseball.
Growing up on the Highland Park Scots and the Texas Longhorns, football has always been a passion.
Baseball, simply put, is my favorite sport, and always will be.
Basketball, well I’ve been slow to warm up to it. Always loved to play it — the highlight of my eighth-grade year was getting my first technical foul — but for me, the NBA was always rigged and Texas didn’t really didn’t have a basketball team until it made the Great Eight in 1990.
Basketball has grown on me, thanks to a good friend and his father, who are huge NBA fans, T.J. Ford and the opportunity to cover the 2005 state champion Plano Wildcats, whose point guard, John Roberson, start for Texas Tech.
And with that, I’m fired up for a quick trip to the Waco area tonight, where, if you’re a basketball junkie like I am now, you could see the 5-1 Lady Tigers play Waco Connally and the Tigers boys play their first game against Lorena, all in about three hours (the girls play at 6:30 and the boys around 8 p.m.)
This could be an interesting year for Corsicana basketball. The Lady Tigers are a solid pick to get one of District 16-4A’s playoff spots with a strong senior nucleus led by Capricia Jones and Amari Dowell and junior Amber Ames.
“I really like they way my team is playing,” said Lady Tigers coach Laura-Walker Holmes after her team took fifth place in last weekend’s Corsicana Varsity Tournament.
The boys would be a lock to win a 6-foot-and-under league, and will play in a district with a bunch of trees at Midway and Waco University. But Tigers coach Andy Dotson is confident his team can compete.
“I certainly feel like we’ve got a shot not knowing exactly what everyone else has,” Dotson said. “It’s pretty hard to pick against Midway, but I’m one of those guys who doesn’t ever go against himself.”
The Tigers return guards Laquintis Holbert, guard Taylor Jacobson and forward Matt Ward. They will be the team’s captains. Dotson is excited about brothers Antoine and Emmanuel Chaney, a pair of 5-9 guards who transferred from basketball powerhouse Duncanville, which happens to be the No. 1 ranked team in the nation.
“I’m encouraged from the way we’ve looked in practice,” Dotson said. “You never know until the lights come on.
“They’re going to be exciting to watch. We have a lot of seniors but only three that have played in a varsity game.”
Dotson loves the fact that his motion offense forced Lancaster to play zone the last two years, and as he says, “That might be a sin in Lancaster, Texas.”
“People that enjoy the game the way it’s suppose to be played,” Dotson said, “When guys are swinging the ball around and playing together and diving on the floor, which is what you have to do when you have a small team, that’s what we’ll do.”
Who knows, maybe there are a few of you out there who will make the trip down Highway 31 tonight, and give these teams a chance.
The Lady Tigers have a fan in Dotson.
“What little I’ve seen I know they have a good chance,” he said. “They have some good guards.”

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