The Bulldogs need to move on. They know they need to move on.
After two games on Friday and Saturday — two losses where the Bulldogs struggled heavily — it is time to move on.
“You’ve got to,” coach Mickey Cozart said. “You’ve got one practice day and then Warren.”
With just that one practice day before playing Warren, a team that is coming off a 23-5 season in which it beat Athens 69-51, it might be hard to fix some of the struggles the Bulldogs had in their first two games.
But fixing those struggles is what the Bulldogs will need to do to get back on track. Whether the team needs to distribute the ball better, defend better or be more successful in transition, if the Bulldogs don’t improve, the struggles will continue Tuesday night.
A good sign for Athens, however, was the fourth quarter of the game Saturday. Even though the Bulldogs lost the game, they were even with Bishop Watterson in the second half. Both teams scored 26 points.
They pressed, which can allow them to catch the opposing team off guard, and play better in transition. Transition points would allow Athens to build some confidence, and allow them to find improvement in the other areas it struggled with over the weekend.
When the Bulldogs create turnovers from the press, more passing lanes will be opened, allowing more shots to fall. They just need to make more shots to be in that position.
“It’s what we want to do,” Cozart said. “We haven’t been able to score enough to do what we want to do.”
And while it seems simple to say, that’s what the Bulldogs are going to have to do to find success Tuesday night and moving forward the rest of the season: score more than they have so far.
Athens only scored 75 points over the weekend, as compared to the 116 points it scored over the opening weekend last season.
One of the keys to scoring more points? Taking care of the ball.
“Until we stop turning the ball over at that rate, we’re not going to win basketball games,” Cozart said.
