Greenbrier coach sees reason to keep focus

Greenbrier's girls knocked off Evans last Friday but once again took a back seat to a more hyped and more competitive boys varsity game.

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They're not taking a back seat to anyone else.

The Lady Wolfpack rolled to an 81-39 victory over Evans. It was their third highest point total of the season and lifted their overall record to 22-0.

Senior Tiffany Blackburn scored 22 points on four 3-pointers in the win, and Michelle Swiec and Dorian Freeman each added 10 points.

With the usual full-court press and transition game, the Lady Wolfpack have taken full control of the Region 3B-AAAA standings. Greenbrier coach Garrett Black said his girls are concentrating on one thing.

"Our focus right now is the region and just getting to the state tournament," he said. "We're not in early season or midseason; this is the stretch run."

Still, with a team that's posting 30-point wins or more on a regular basis, problems have come up. In 22 games, only once have the Greenbrier starters been challenged enough to produce a single-digit margin of victory. In the other games, three quarters of effort has been good enough.

That's not good enough for Black.

"At times we've had to talk about our effort," he said. "We've got to get better for Tuesday and Friday night."

Pushing his girls to play hard for the entire game helps in conditioning the team for tougher opponents in the region and state tournaments. Black said he has concentrated on perfecting the full-court press and man-to-man defense, but the result is usually an overly lopsided score.

"We're trying to get our legs in shape for a four-quarter game. Unfortunately, the perception is that we're running up the score," he said. "That's just how we play. We backed off tonight in the fourth quarter and tried to work on our man-to-man a little more."

Greenbrier entered the week with an average winning margin of 29.7 points per game.