Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 20, 1994 TAG: 9401190061
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Heady days are at hand for Shawsville High basketball.
Teams at the 8th-grade, junior varsity and varsity levels are bursting at the seams with players. That's a major triumph considering the smallness of the school.
Practices and games are crackling with enthusiasm. Guys are showing up early and going home late and flinch not a whit at hard work.
After a catastrophe borne of suspensions and defections left the Shawnees varsity with six players for the last nine games of the 1992-93 season, three of the veterans - Darrell Bibb, Corey Dow, and Jeremy Nichols - are coming back with their best years.
The varsity coach, Tracy Poff, is fired up, and not only because he's the beaming owner of a sporty new four-wheel-drive.
And the Shawnees have lost 23 straight games.
"We're going to beat somebody," Poff said. "It might be the last game of the season; it might be next week. But we're going to beat somebody."
Who's to dispute him?
"We're 0-8, but we're a lot better than 0-8," Poff said. "Except for the games with Floyd County and Auburn, we've been in every game we've played. We lose our composure 30 seconds here and a minute there and we lose a ball game.'
Seems like it always comes down to the nit-picky stuff. Take the Galax game. Shawsville's down nine at halftime, cuts it to 36-34 in the third quarter and comes up with three straight defensive stops. The hang-up is at the other end, where the Shawnees heave the ball away three straight times. Shawsville's in it until the end, but they lose 55-49.
Ah, the nit-picky stuff.
Shawsville has visited the free throw line 63 more times than its opponents but has squandered the advantage with a horrendous 42.9 accuracy rate from the stripe.
Despite giving away inches and inches of height to most teams, Shawsville has hung in there well with just about everybody on the backboards. However, it's taken almost 200 fewer shots than its foes. That's because it has almost twice as many turnovers as its foes.
You get the idea.
But is this crew dismayed? Not hardly.
"I don't even think about the losing streak," junior forward Bibb said. "All I think about is going out and playing hard and playing like a team. If you lose and give 100 percent, that's all you can do."
Still, there are frustrations.
"It does get pretty frustrating," he said. "I think about all the things that I could have done or the things we could have done as a team that would have helped us to win a game."
Frustrating, but not as bad as last year. That was when a bunch of kids, including members of the team and cheerleaders' squad, got into a disciplinary bind on a bus trip to an away game. Once the smoke had cleared, three players had been suspended and three more had quit the team, leaving six to finish the season. JV players were sent into the varsity fray before they were ready; Bibb was one of the few true varsity players left and he was a sophomore.
Even under those dire circumstances, Shawsville came close to winning some games. But as you can imagine, the experience wasn't great.
"We didn't even learn that much because everybody knew what our situation was and they took it easy on us in games," Poff said.
Teams can't take it easy on Shawsville any more. Dow has turned into a shifty little point guard who is averaging almost five assists per game. Once he starts cutting down on turnovers, he'll be even more threatening. Nichols can score - he had 20 against Galax - but he's been maddeningly inconsistent. When that changes, Shawsville will be much better.
Much better because they already have one proven scorer in Bibb, who's averaging almost 22 points per game despite being the target of just about every junk defense in the book.
"That shows you the respect teams have for him," Poff said.
You have to have respect for Bibb after the year he's had. Bibb figured to have a bang-up football season as the quarterback of the Shawnees, but he had shoulder problems and appeared in only seven games, most of those in a limited capacity. Still, he accounted for 660 total yards.
"He was excellent," football coach Jerry Cannaday said. "The only way he hurt us was not having him in there."
Then Bibb's father died during the fall.
Bibb has been as resilient as anybody could be under the circumstances. Furthermore, he's the first one to realize that he isn't going at it alone.
"We're playing much better as a team than we did last year, which is why I'm scoring more," he said. "We have a point guard [Dow] who penetrates and dishes the ball off well and the rest of the guys are doing a good job of getting me the ball down low."
Poff figures Bibb's scoring is going to be there. When others start coming around is when the Shawnees start improving.
"Our offense isn't built only around Darrell," Poff said. "Everybody has the green light to shoot."
Poff's only concern is that the players will become too discouraged before they turn the corner.
"Right now, these kids are acting like they're 8-0 and not 0-8."
by CNB