Lady Indians look for consistency

The Chipola Lady Indians will be back in preseason basketball action Saturday in the Florida JUCO Jamboree in Tallahassee.

All five Panhandle Conference teams will be in action, as will teams from the Mid-Florida Conference.

Chipola made its preseason debut Oct. 10 in a jamboree in Columbus, Ga. The Lady Indians swept three games over South Georgia Tech, Middle Georgia and Albany Tech.

However, Lady Indians coach David Lane said his team has not carried over the momentum of its Columbus effort into practice.

“It hasn’t been great,” the coach said. “We’re just real inconsistent as a team and as individuals, and that’s been the tough part of it.

“It’s just a little more difficult now to get done what we need to get done when you never know how kids are going to practice.”

Lane said he is looking for a different attitude from his team on Saturday than he has seen in the practices leading up to the jamboree.

“The biggest thing is the overall effort hasn’t been great,” he said. “We’ve got to have a desire to get better, and that’s what we’re missing right now.”

Lane said he worries that his players — Chipola has no returning players from last year’s team — got a false impression of the level they’ll need to play at this season after sweeping through their first jamboree.

“I don’t know if we think we’ve got it figured out or what,” the coach said. “We’ve got a group with kids who weren’t here last year that don’t understand that the teams we’ve played so far are absolutely nothing compared to what we’ll be playing in the Panhandle Conference.”

Lane said he still hadn’t been told who Chipola will be playing Saturday, but no Panhandle teams will be facing each other.

Regardless, the competition should prove more difficult.

“It should be a step up,” the coach said. “Obviously, everyone has had two more weeks to get better, so it’s a good test to see how much better we’ve gotten.

“We just need to see how we respond to it. If it’s any way like it’s been the last week and a half in practice, we won’t respond well.”

With Chipola’s first regular season game on Nov. 2, Lane said it was paramount for his team to start showing signs of improvement.

“We’re less than two weeks away from the first game, but we’re still making silly mistakes everyday,” the coach said. “We just have an overall lack of focus as a team on basketball. It’s tough because you sit there and try all different ways to motivate them, but not a whole lot seems to be working right now.”

The Lady Indians open the regular season in Jacksonville against FCCJ, and make their home debut Nov. 6 in the Milton H. Johnson Classic.