Seniors, Two Sophs Lead The Way

DAYTON - Buckminster Fuller once said, "I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience."

If the 2012-13 Dayton Bulldog girls basketball team wins the league title this year, second-year head coach Clayton Strong and his squad will be able to claim the same. The seasoned Bulldogs return five seniors and five players with at least 10 games of varsity starting experience.

Headlining the crew is three-sport standout senior McKayla Bickelhaupt.

"She was an all-league wing last year," said Strong. "And she led us in many statistical categories. She'll be asked to do a lot of the same things she did last year-score, rebound, distribute off the wing, play defense. She's going to be asked to be multi-faceted in her role."

Gone from last year's team are dominant post player Shelby Smith, Dayton's best on-ball defender Nicole Lambert, and versatile wing Samura Miller.

Five-foot, 10-inch senior Malia Frame will step into Smith's role as primary post presence on the team.

"At the end of last year, Malia became in some instances our best rebounder," said Strong. "But, we're going to ask her to add a little offense to what she was doing as an inside presence, and score more."

The third senior with starting experience is guard Courtney Fuller. Like most of his squad, Strong is asking Fuller to bump up her point totals.

"She'll be asked to take on a little more of the scoring. She'll be one of our perimeter on-ball defenders, because she's fairly quick and very aggressive. She'll take on some of the role of Nicole Lambert. And she'll be asked to share the ballhandling as well."

The two seniors who didn't start last year, but may this year, are Jessica Tate and 5-foot, 10-inch Samantha Harting.

"We haven't decided on starters at all at this point, but Jessica may end up starting," Strong said. "She's very steady, very quiet about what she does. She seems to be in the right place at the right time on both ends of the floor. She does a lot of the little things that don't get recognized. She'll step in and take charges. She'll guard bigs, guard guards, she'll go get loose balls to get us extra possessions. But she also has some potential to be a pretty good scorer as well. Samantha's role last year was to be an extra post defender. She plays as hard as anybody we've got, and I'd argue as hard as anybody defensively in our league. She's strong. She's quick. And we're working with her to improve her offensive game as well."

The Lady Bulldogs also feature two sophomores who started nearly a dozen games as freshmen: Lexi Ramirez and Sarah Phillips. By year's end Phillips was the starting point guard.

"She works extremely hard on both ends of the floor, she has a great attitude, and she's coachable," noted Strong. "She is probably our best pure distributor- pass first, score second. She'll be asked to handle the basketball and in some instances she'll be asked to guard the other team's best perimeter offensive player. She and Courtney are going to have to take on Nicole's role of being our best on-ball defender."

At this point, junior Lexi Ward and sophomore Kaitlyn Andrews will be the depth of the team as the Strong predicts the two will swing back-and-forth between varsity and the junior varsity line.

"Lexi is going to mirror some of the things that McKayla and Jessica do and some of what our guards are asked to do," Strong said. "She's going to be asked to defend and score and distribute. She's extremely smart basketball wise. She just has a knack for playing the game. Offensively, we're going to try to be up-tempo and spread the floor. Because we're not very big, we're going to have to take advantage of being able to screen and free people up off the screens with the floor spread. We're also going to have to pick our spots and get easy transition buckets too.

"Defensively, we'll primarily play man-to-man. Because we're not big, we're going to have to rebound the ball exceptionally well to be able to do what we want to do offensively. When we rebounded well last year, we were successful. When we didn't, we weren't so successful."

Strong predicts parity from a very competitive league this year.

Dayton's first game is Friday in Elgin. The first league games for Dayton pop up Dec. 14 and 15 - just before Christmas.

"We've got Asotin and WP the third weekend of December," said Strong, "which will be a big weekend for all three of us, because they're the first two league games. And with only 10 league games, each one takes on a little more importance."

Dayton Girls Varsity

McKayla

Bickelhaupt-Sr.

Jessica Tate- Sr.

Courtney Fuller- Sr.

Samantha Harting- Sr.

Malia Frame- Sr.

Sarah Phillips- So.

Lexie Ramirez- So.

Lexus Ward- Jr.

Kaitlyn Andrews- So.