The NBA season might be over, but basketball is being played in Mississippi. Winona High School will be participating in summer league ball throughout June.
“A lot of the older coaches I have talked with say that the summer league is the equivalent of playing a whole season,” said Winona coach Presley Coleman. He said playing in the summer league promotes team chemistry and gives coaches a chance to evaluate players.
“It's kind of like a jamboree format. Usually, we play two games a day,” Coleman said.
For Winona, summer league began last week with games against Aberdeen and Amory at Calhoun City and against Grenada and South Panola at Grenada.
“Defensively, we looked really good,” Coleman said of the games at Calhoun City. “We struggled to score at times. But overall, we looked better than we did in the regular season. I've seen a lot of progress.”
Grenada and South Panola are both 6A schools. Winona is 2A. “I'm proud of how we played against two schools that are way up in classification from us,” Coleman said. “Playing teams like that is definitely going to make us better.”
The Winona team includes players from Winona and Montgomery County because the two schools are set to merge in the fall. One of those players is Deaterrious Williams, who averaged 12.1 points as a junior this year in helping Montgomery County reach the quarterfinals of the 1A state tournament.
“He's a very good player,” Coleman said.
The coach also mentioned several players from his team who have looked good in summer ball – Robert McBath, Sean Merritt, Dre Bays, Adavian Hargrove and Trey Glover.
Winona will play Hamilton of Alabama and Potts Camp at Itawamba Community College Thursday. Next week, there will be games with Ridgeland and Madison Central at Ridgeland Monday and Ripley and Tupelo Christian at Ripley Thursday.
