With a squad full of depth and experience, the North Platte girls’ basketball team will look to use both aspects to its advantage on the court this winter.
Ryan Davis is returning as the Lady Panthers’ head coach after one year away from the team.
Last year the Lady Panthers started off 17-5 before losing four of their final five games, including their first district game after receiving a first-round bye as the No. 1 seed. North Platte has seven players who have started games in the past and it will be experimentally with various lineups early in the season.
“At this point, we don’t have a starting lineup set in stone, but we have quite a few girls competing for those spots and for playing time,” North Platte girls’ basketball coach Ryan Davis said. “We should have an extremely deep team, but also part of that is also finding who can fit into what roles, who can fit into what lineups and who’s going to break out of the pack.”
The Lady Panthers’ two top scorers from last season were the only seniors as North Platte will have other players step up to fill that scoring absence. Senior guard Jaylin Burgess is looking to take on that scoring role after starting each of the last two years and will be joined by other experienced teammates.
“Jaylin (Burgess) was an honorable mention all-conference player last year and an all-district player. Karli Guinn, Gracelynn Hoffman, Lonee French, Alaina Scroggins, Lindsay Ramsay and Kenedie Summers have all started some games for us, so even with those two seniors graduating, we have seven girls who are solid players and have started varsity games for us in the past,” Davis said.
Guinn is a 6-foot-4 post player and Hoffman led North Platte in perimeter shooting last fall so that senior duo will be additional offensive threats this year. Sophomores Brianna DeBord and Camryn Kersten, along with freshman Allyson Smith, are some younger faces that will be looking to find a way into the rotation.
“Even though we bring a lot of girls back, we have a lot of girls who are going to have to step up. When you lose two of your better players, that makes everybody kind of jump up the totem pole a couple of notches,” Davis said.
The Lady Panthers are starting the season with 14 total players dressing out on varsity, so there will be plenty of depth for North Platte this year. With a three-year drought from having a district championship – with the last one being in 2019 – the Lady Panthers will be working on their defense to help bring home another banner when the season ends.
“If we’re not playing defense, then we’re not playing Panther basketball; there’s not an option to have a bad defense with that. We have to be better in February than we are now, so we have to push each other and find out how to to lock teams down on the defensive end,” Davis said.