Veteran team’s focus: Win area title again
After falling short of a fifth consecutive area title, head coach Patrick Odom and the Russellville Golden Tigers will look to compete for the Class 5A Area 15 championship once again this season.
Odom’s squad will primarily look to replace E.J. King, who became the first Golden Tiger since 1983 to be selected for the Alabama Sportswriter’s Association’s (ASWA) first team. King led Russellville with a stellar 31 points per game scoring average. He also surpassed the 2,000-career point mark and was chosen as the ASWA 5A Player of the Year.
Typically, when you lose a guy of King’s caliber, it oftentimes becomes somewhat of a fatal blow to a team. Given the Golden Tigers are returning 80% of their returning starters from last year, Odom is confident his guys can fill in the margins.
Senior guard Malaki Groce and senior forward Parker Odom, junior forward Daniel Aycock and sophomore Sir Williams are returning to their starting roles from a year ago.
“Each of those guys played a lot of minutes for us last year, and they have a ton of game experience,” Odom said. “We have a lot of guys who have played, but the challenge for us is going to be going out there and playing when we lost the 5A player of the year.”
Odom said during the summer workouts and play dates, learning how to score more frequently without King on the roster provided a bit of a “learning curve” for his returning guys.
Still, Odom said after seeing the progress, he’s confident the players can pick up and fill in the holes left by King’s 31 points per game.
“We may not have one guy that scores 30 (points) a game, but if we can get four guys scoring 10, that’s better production,” Odom said. “All of our guys are growing into much different roles and they’re working to being better in those roles.”
On the one hand, Odom said having four returning starters can be a good thing. On the other hand, filling out the rest of his team’s depth chart with both quality and experience will pose a bit of a challenge, especially early in the season.
“When we get past the four guys who have played, we’re looking at a lot of younger guys,” Odom said. “We even have a couple of guys that didn’t play last year who had previously been in the program that are now coming back. There’s growing curves with that and getting our depth where we want it is going to be key.”
It would be hard to imagine getting back on top of the Class 5A Area 15 standings isn’t a preseason goal for Odom’s team. Bouncing back to win the area title is a goal that will linger as the season goes on.
“We know it’s one step at a time, but we want to be the last guys standing,” Odom said. “We’ve had a lot of success in recent years, but it is a dog fight every night. They want to beat Russellville very bad, and we just have to grow and be ready for those games.”
