Veterans boys come out with intensity and physicality in scrimmage blowout over Lamar County

KATHLEEN — The Brandon Driggers era at Veterans has started, and the Warhawks came out with physicality and intensity in their 72-43 win over Lamar County.

Even still, Driggers wants more from his squad as he looks to bring a toughness the program hasn’t seen before.

“Over the summer we wanted to bring intensity and toughness into the culture. I can say at the beginning of this game, the physicality and the energy wasn’t where I want it to be at,” he said. “I really challenged them at half, to keep [Lamar County] under a certain amount of points, and I felt like we had certain groups that came onto the court that really got after it.”

One of the players that impressed was junior Tylan Glover. He did well staying in front of ball handlers, and though a couple of his plays resulted in needless fouls, he presented a level of effort Driggers commended.

“Tylan Glover, I thought he did a great job of sitting down, playing with his body, getting his hands out,” Driggers said.

Playing with their body on defense is one area the Warhawks have to work on. The intensity and physicality on defense was great, but a few players got caught with their hands in the cookie jar for reach-in fouls.

“We work on it every day. We work on playing with our body and not our hands,” Driggers said. “We do a lot of fundamental drills, a lot of defensive drills where we work on sitting down, playing with our body and not putting our hands in there…I think the biggest thing is just keeping working in practice. We’re going to keep working at practice, keep drilling them and drilling them and drilling them, and eventually it’s going to be there.”

Veterans played a full court man-to-man press for much of the game, and were aggressive doubling ball handlers around half court. That generated some turnovers got the Warhawks some open threes, of which they hit a few to take a 43-23 halftime lead.

The rotations were deep and constant for Veterans, too, as they tested the mettle of some younger players they hope can contribute during region play.

That, along with general early-season conditioning issues, caused the intensity to wane as the game went on. The Warhawks went ice cold in the fourth missing easy looks at the rim, but they put together a couple of baskets and outscored the Trojans 12-6 in the final period.

“I would say it’s conditioning, but the biggest thing is really just focusing, being locked into the game,” Driggers said on what caused the fourth-quarter slowdown. “I told our starting five at a certain point I was going to pull them…that group that came in at the end, I kind of wanted to see those guys. You got some juniors and some sophomores on there that [we’re] really gonna see if they can help us out during the season. The biggest thing [was] I wanted to see them play with a lead. They had a 25-point lead, so I wanted to see [if they could maintain it].”

UP NEXT

Veterans opens their regular season on Saturday, Nov. 15 at home against Warner Robins. Tipoff is scheduled for 4 p.m.