The 2021 News-Times All Area Girls Basketball Team was defense oriented. Smackover’s Adrianna Grant, El Dorado’s Charalyn Rester and Carshaila Rozier and Parkers Chapel seniors Taylor Fortune and Drue Thomas all put the ball in the basket.
But it was on the other end of the court where they made their biggest impact.
Rozier, a 6-0 junior, led the Lady Wildcats in scoring and steals. Athletic, she could score inside and out and guarded everyone from guards to posts. She averaged 14.1 points, 5 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game.
“She has untapped potential that she has not tapped into. It’s really how hard she wants to work for how much better she can get. That’s the most exciting part of coaching a kid like her,” said El Dorado coach Jae Kell. “She can still grow and develop more. She’s already a pretty phenomenal athlete and a phenomenal ball player.
“I would consider her a position-less player. If I needed to, I could put her down low on defense to help guard. She was at the top of our defense. She was the point guard sometimes. She was the shooting guard. You name it and she can do it. But we run a position-less system. I think that’s one reason why she did so well. We didn’t just put her out there as, you’re just a two-guard or you’re just a three-guard, she can play wherever she needed to play and get the shots that were open for her.”
Rester, a 5-4 sophomore, got an early taste of varsity basketball, playing about six games as a freshman. This season, she took over the offense and ran the team. She averaged 9.4 points, 3.4 rebounds and 2.1 steals.
“I thought she came in this year knowing what it took to be a varsity player. I think that helped her a lot with just the speed of the game and knowing what to do,” said Kell. “She was our point guard for most of the year, so she had to run the court. She had to see where things were going. She controlled the tempo of the game. All that being said, she did it last year and I think that helped her this year.”
Kell said there’s plenty of room for improvement for Rester as she continues to adjust to the varsity level.
“Not being so one dimensional. She’s a great driver. She is a great finisher at the rim. She got too focused on 3-point shooting and not enough driving toward the end of the year. Getting back to that driving and attacking the rim, which she is so good at. She’s got a great first step. I look forward to seeing that more next year,” said Kell, who commented on Rester’s leadership skills.
“It’s something she’s continuing to work on. She’s a very good leader. She knows the right things to do, and she knows the right places to be. It’s getting her to speak up and tell other people what to do.
“She is competitive. She does like to win. She likes herself to do very well. What we’re focusing on this year is more about the team doing well and less about individually doing well. If she, individually, does well, that means the team will do well. But if she’s doing bad, it doesn’t mean the team is doing bad. Just because she’s struggling that night, it doesn’t mean the team is struggling. We’re trying to get her to seeing a little bit of that.”
Grant was always a standout on defense. Smackover coach Makara Frazier said the 5-7 senior upped her game on the offensive end. She averaged 13 points, 4 rebounds, 2.1 assists and a whopping 4.4 steals per game.
“She had a pretty solid year offensively and defensively. When I needed her to be aggressive, she was very aggressive, for the most part,” said Frazier. “On defense, her energy level, nine times out of 10, was at a 10. She just really knew how to apply pressure, get out in passing lanes and create her own offense, which is what really helped us out a lot. Especially in those games we had to win, she stepped up a lot defensively and came through for us.”
The coach said Grant’s offensive game showed the most improvement.
“She could catch and shoot. That’s her thing,” said Frazier. “When she was on the 3-point line and she was open, she was going to shoot it. I think her 3-point shot really improved this season and that helped her a lot. On the slight chance someone left her open or they lost her on a box-and-one, she did what she had to do.”
Fortune got off to a slow start in her senior season. The 5-10 forward missed two weeks, three games, due to COVID. The Lady Trojans lost to Spring Hill in her absence and also fell to Fordyce in her first game back.
PC would rally to tie for the league championship before winning the regional title. Fortune’s play was a big reason.
“Basketball is such a rhythm sport, you kind of have to get into that groove to get going. I feel like Taylor really didn’t start clicking on all of her cylinders until probably the last week or so of January,” said PC coach Justin Welch. “As a coach, it was a welcomed sight once she did. She kind of struggled with her shooting because she just wasn’t quite in that game shape, which takes a little while.”
Fortune averaged 9.2 points and 5.9 rebounds per game. She also averaged 1.4 blocks and 1.1 charges taken.
“With Taylor, she’s almost like a double threat when it comes to defense. She can block your shot. In the back of your mind, anytime you go into the lane with a shot blocker, it changes your mentality,” said Welch. “Or she can slide over and take a charge, which is another factor. Anytime you’re penetrating, you’re always thinking about it. It’s like she was a double threat from a defensive standpoint. Especially in today’s game, when so many offenses revolve around the dribble penetration and kick, the dribble drive offense, if she’s sliding over and taking charges on the drive, that really effects the offense. It gets the rhythm out of it. Her defensive presence was almost priceless in there.”
Thomas saw her role change throughout her career. The Lady Trojans needed her to handle the ball as a sophomore, provide inside offense as a junior. As a senior, she turned her attention to the defensive end of the court.
“Drue was the matcher in that match-up zone. She knows that defense backwards and forwards. From a coach’s standpoint, to have, not only one person out there on the court but two people that are able to do that, that helps so much,” said Welch. “The other area that Drue really excels at is just anticipation. You watch her on the court and, sometimes you don’t realize what happens when it’s live. But you go back and watch it on film, you’ll see Drue actually starts breaking almost three passes before it happens. It’s crazy. You can see her just look out there and see a person on that wing open and she knows the offense wants to reverse it and she’ll reverse on that ball. You don’t realize how amazing it is until you go back. Sometimes it took me a couple of (looks) to see when she was reading that. She’s so good at that.”
Thomas averaged 11.4 points, 6.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.3 steals. Welch said her defense was a key to the Lady Trojans’ late-season surge.
“During that stretch in district and regional, she got the call to guard their best inside presence lots of time. Usually, it was a person bigger than she was. I thought she did a fantastic job against a couple of the girls. We played some really good, solid basketball players in that regional tournament. She was able to limit their scoring, and, in some cases, she actually shut them down completely,” said Welch.
“I think the part that doesn’t go on paper that Drue does so well is her leadership ability. She’s a communicator. She’s more of a sergeant out there on the court. The girls understand that. In a pressure situation, they need somebody to let them know what they needed to do and Drue was always that person that could get them in the right spots at the right times.”
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