Danville girls basketball having renaissance season
For the Enquirer
Hard work is paying off for a Danville girls basketball team that has developed a winning formula this season.
The Hawks were ranked 10th in Class 4A in the season’s first Alabama Sports Writers Association basketball poll after winning 12 of their first 14 games. Now they sit at 15-4.
Not bad for a team that just moved up from 3A this season and recorded six wins just three years ago.
Head coach Mallory Alberti was an assistant on that team and took the reigns as head coach the following year. Alberti’s first goal was to establish a new culture.
“If you work hard, it’ll pay off eventually,” Alberti stated. “We focused on working hard to be better. I just worked really hard on changing the culture of the girls’ mindset. So we just focused on the little things like playing for each other and growing as a family.” Danville finished 13-17 and 14-17, respectively, in Alberti’s first two seasons as head coach. Each campaign ended in the 3A subregionals. The Hawks’ 56-18 win over Colbert County on Dec. 23 gave Danville its 14th victory of this season, matching last year’s season total.
A 2005 Danville graduate, Alberti played varsity basketball under former coach Paul Wilson. She has turned to Wilson and several other veteran coaches for insight, including Sam Brown, who coached boys basketball for 39 years.
Brown had stints at Brewer, Decatur and twice at West Morgan. The now-retired head coach has witnessed firsthand the Hawks’ family environment while assisting with the team this season.
“(Coach Alberti) does so much,” Brown said. “They go out to eat. They do a lot of bonding things. They went shopping to get some needy person something for Christmas. They go above and beyond with the team stuff, the way they love and care about each other on another level. That part has been fun for me is to watch, not only what they do on the floor but what they do off the floor.” Danville’s roster is loaded with players who grew up in the program together the past several years. Three seniors, Maddie Sherrill, Aubrey Reed and Lanie Martin, return with juniors Adily Alberti, Kallie Johnson, Yuri Garnett, Kirstyn Robinson and Addison Prater, with freshman Braylee Heath rounding out the roster.
“This group has played together for a long time,” Alberti said of her seniors and juniors. “I helped coach when they were in middle school. They won the county championship in middle school as seventh and eighth graders. I love that they’re getting to see that hard work pays off.” That hard work has especially displayed itself on defense.
“Our goal is to keep teams to single-digit quarters,” Alberti stated.
While not achieving that goal in every quarter, Danville held opponents to 33.6 points per game, 8.4 points per quarter, in starting the season 14-3 after beating Colbert County. The Hawks allowed fewer than 30 points in nine games and under 20 in six contests. They were unbeaten in those games.
“All the stuff Coach Alberti’s implemented the past couple of years is finally clicking,” Sherrill said. “Last year we focused a lot more on how to react to what other teams do. This year she brought in Coach Brown and he’s helped us a lot with man-to-man defense.” “The past two years we struggled to score so we had to press,” Alberti added. “We ran a whole bunch of different defenses.” The improved defense has also carried over to the offense.
“A lot of our points are off of other teams’ turnovers,” Sherrill said.
Getting stops and generating fast break opportunities has been pivotal to Danville’s success.
“Their athletic ability was what jumped out to me,” Brown observed. “There’s pretty good team speed, good footwork.
That allows them to be good defensively.” Reed said the team’s speed helps offset any height disadvantages the Hawks might have against opponents.
“We’re a little team. We don’t really have much height,” said Reed, who plays in the post for the Hawks. “When we rebound, we get it out quick and get it up the floor because we’re fast.” Also, the team’s move from 3A to 4A has not fazed the Hawks.
“We just focus on ourselves and us improving our game,” Martin said.
