This time last season, the Lakeside girls basketball team was watching state tournament action from home.
A 14-11 record wasn’t enough to give the Lady Panthers entry into the GHSA state tournament — a destination the program’s only seen twice in the last 10 years.
Things are different now in just the first year of coach Matt Scott’s tenure as head coach. Lakeside (23-6) marches into Saturday’s 5 p.m. Sweet 16 matchup at No. 3 Marist (26-1) in Atlanta armed with a school-record for wins and a mindset that they don’t have to take a backseat to any program in the state — not even one with state championship pedigree.
Marist is two years removed from a Class AAAA state title, and it lost last year to eventual Class AAAAAA state champion River Ridge in the Elite Eight.
This year, the War Eagles’ lone loss came four days before Christmas in a 38-31 setback to Class AA No. 1 Mount Paran.
Don’t look for any of that to scare this Lakeside bunch.
“The girls aren’t intimidated,” Scott said. “They’ve beaten Josey, beat Butler, played North Augusta, another championship team, twice. They’re not scared of anybody. They’re anxious to get going.”
That’s because a 23-win Lakeside girls basketball team is something the school’s never seen before, and Scott feels like his program has been ready for this kind of success since day one.
SUMMERTIME HEAD START
“June 5,” Scott said. “That’s when I think it began for us. We had that date written up on our board in the locker room. The girls started then, learning how to work out. Then they started seeing the results, the fruits of their labor, in Butler’s summer league. They worked really hard and saw the results quickly transfer into the games they played.”
Take, for example, the third game of the regular season. Lakeside played Class AA No. 2 Josey, one of the Augusta area’s most consistent championship contending programs, and defeated the Lady Eagles 52-49 in overtime.
“That’s when I knew, for one, they’re not scared of anybody now,” Scott said. “Of course, Josey’s a proven team. In the regular season they lost to us and North Augusta. That’s it. And that gave them confidence like, ‘Oh, we can do this.’”
Later in the season, Lakeside knocked off Butler, another of the area’s more solid squads which also upended Josey in the Region 4-AA tournament championship game last week, and though it lost twice to 2022-23 Class AAAA South Carolina champion North Augusta, the exposure to that level of competition has prepared the Panthers well.
When Lakeside beat Grovetown 48-38 on Jan. 30, it tied the program record for wins in a season at 18. The very next game, four days later at South Effingham, a new record was established.
Since Jan. 23’s 70-42 win against Effingham County, Lakeside’s ripped of nine victories in its last 10 games, including a 52-41 win against Rockdale County in the first round of the Class AAAAAA state tournament.
But despite more winning than Lakeside’s ever seen in one season, Scott points to some of the losses as the true catalyst for rapid program maturity.
LOSING TO WIN
When Lakeside had to travel 200 miles to Brunswick and Glynn Academy on consecutive days, the Panthers lost both games narrowly. And though it put a temporary damper on an historic season, Scott says it was the kind of setback that his team needed.
“Sometimes I tell them that you learn from losing,” he said. “It’s not fun. As a coach, my life is a lot easier when we win. Parents are happy. Kids are happy. Brothers and sisters are happy. But losing those two, it kind of got us refocused. They’ve never won like this. They didn’t know how to win. Then, they didn’t know how to win seven in a row and then lose without thinking the world was falling apart.
“I think the losses gave them some emotional scar tissue to where it doesn’t shake them to the core emotionally when they lose a game.”
Make no mistake, though. Scott and his squad don’t want to lose to Marist. And he believes his team doesn’t have to.
“Whether it was Houston County or Marist that we were playing, this is a winnable game for us,” Scott said. “Their strength of schedule hasn’t really impressed me. And our style of play is tough to prepare for.”
32 MINUTES OF ‘HAVOC’
When asked to describe that Lakeside culture, Scott began with a one-word response.
“Havoc,” he said, referencing the calling card of the high-intensity, high-pressure playing style that the Shaka Smart-coached VCU men’s basketball team employed — especially on defense — during its NCAA Tournament Final Four run back in 2011.
“It’s not just the physical part,” he continued, “it’s the mental part. Nobody likes playing against that. I thought about what I hated playing against, and I absolutely hated playing against that style of basketball. And we have the personnel. We’ve got the athletes. We’ve got a couple of soccer players who have good lateral movement. You remember VCU? Well, that’s what we try to do — wreak havoc with their psyche and their bodies on the court.”
It’s definitely been a good formula for Lakeside. And it starts with junior guard Asunti Porter who returned to Lakeside after spending her sophomore season at Grovetown.
Her 20.3 points and four steals per game are tone setters for Lakeside on both offense and defense. Speaking of defense, 6-foot-3 sophomore center Kobi Barnes’ 7.1 blocked shots per game leads the state in all classifications. She’s also scoring 12 points and grabbing 12 boards per contest.
Aside from those two, Scott lauds players such as Jai’Ana Stokes, Aeriel Patterson, DallyAnn Morales and Elise Graybill for rounding the team out with their mixture of experience, leadership and tenacity.
Graybill, a sophomore, is one of those soccer players Scott referenced whose dexterity helps Lakeside stress opponents out defensively. Though not a prolific scorer, she grabs about five rebounds and records 3.5 assists and three steals per game.
Scariest part for future Lakeside opponents is that there are only four seniors on the roster, and though major contributors, none of them are stat stuffers. Which means the brunt of Lakeside’s playmaking ability should return for an encore performance next season.
But talk of next year can wait. Scott sees a hunger in his team’s eyes that lets him know they want more right now.
“These are girls, especially the seniors, who’ve seen some of the lower points here, and they’ve finally got that taste of success and they don’t want it to end,” Scott said. “I’m seeing it in their body language and focus at practice the other day. They asked extra questions. They wanted to watch more film.”
Win or lose against Marist, it’s those things that Scott points to as a barometer for his program’s trajectory.
“They just play so hard,” he said. “You may not make every shot, but you just play hard. I know it’s cliche to say, ‘change the culture,’ but they’ve quickly bought into it. And the culture is play hard, being tough and not being afraid of anybody. That’s our identity.”
Gabriel Stovall is a sportswriter and columnist for The Augusta Press. He can be reached at gabrielcstovall@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Threads: @GabrielCStovall.
