Although basketball has nearly left the minds of basketball players and coaches alike as they enter into new sporting en devours or just entering into the off-season, basketball is still very much on the mind of ADM head girls basketball coach Rick Dillinger.
In his first season at the helm coaching the Lady Tiger basketball team, coach Dillinger’s squad went 8-14 in what some thought would be a complete rebuilding season. While it may have started out that way with a slow start, coach Dillinger had his team firing on all cylinders just over halfway through the season, almost looking like a seasoned championship team. The Lady Tigers did manage to become the 7th best rebounding team in 4A.
Throughout the season coach Dillinger mentioned there were two big ailments that deterred an even better season for the Lady Tigers. ADM had a roller coaster season in terms of shooting efficiency ending the second half of the season the exact same way they did the first half of the season shooting 35.9% from field goal range. The second big deterrent for the Lady Tigers was height which was an uphill battle for them all season long.
Raccoon Valley Radio sat down with coach Dillinger talking about his thoughts on combating the height disadvantage and he stated that better shooting will be the biggest help.
“We’ll still have to try and do multiple different things defensively to try to hide some of our height problems at times. Honestly, shooting improves everything. We improve our shooting which will help our spacing on the floor then the height disadvantage goes away and that’s the big thing our outside shooting has to improve. We had a lot of opportunities, a lot of bunnies that we missed this season and we’re looking to improve that as well. I think you’ll see us be a totally different team because shooting will create more space and the more space you have on offense makes it easier to go one on one,” stated coach Dillinger.