By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
It’s been more than a decade since the Joplin girls basketball team had a winning season and the Eagles were 4-22 last winter, but when the head coaching job opened up, Luke Floyd was interested.
“I’m familiar with them from being in the Ozark Conference, saw a lot of potential here with the basketball program so I thought we’d give it a shot,” Floyd said.
Floyd previously spent five years coaching the Rolla girls but stepped away after the 2018-19 season. The Lady Bulldogs were 24-4 in his final season and advanced to the Class 4 quarterfinals. He was 3-1 against Joplin in his time there. Joplin hired him last spring to replace Jeff Williams.
Floyd said he saw some “really good girls” during Joplin’s open gyms last summer and said the team is hungry for some success.
“It just takes some time but I really think we can build this program up and turn it into something special,” he said.
While Floyd has watched a little bit of film on the Eagles, he isn’t going into the season with any preconceived notions and said players will all arrive the first day of practice with a clean slate. Every day will be a tryout, so the coach isn’t sure what the starting lineup will look like.
The Eagles do return the bulk of their offensive production, at least on paper. Joplin averaged 37.7 points per game last year and the team’s returning players averaged 28, though not in equal time.
Junior Ella Hafer scored 8.3 points and added six rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.5 steals while playing in six games. Junior Brooke Nice played in all 26 games and averaged 6.5 points and 2.8 rebounds. Sophomore Brynn Driver also played in every game and averaged 7.8 points, 2.6 rebounds and better than one assist and steal per contest.
The Eagles also return three seniors, including Lily Pagan, who played in all 26 games, and Jacie Jensen, who played in 21. Sophomores Lindsey Belnap (15 games) and Isabella Yust (7) also saw a lot of varsity action.
While Joplin was outscored by 16 points per game, the Eagles did shoot better than their opponents from the three-point line and averaged nearly five treys a game.
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Floyd said the team averaged about 20 players during summer workouts and as many as 50 are planning on coming out when practices start.
“I know we’ve got a lot of young girls, freshmen and sophomores, signed up to come out,” he said. “I think we had three seniors come out this summer that were around stuff and a pretty good junior class. There’s some pieces there.”
The team’s athleticism has stood out so far and he hopes Joplin can get up and down the floor. The potential to be a “really good” defensive team is also there.
“They’ve got a really good work ethic and the overall athleticism with some of the girls is really impressive,” he said. “There’s some pieces that will allow us to play an aggressive style on the defensive end and hopefully turn that into some transition buckets.”
Floyd plans to employ an aggressive man-to-man defense and wants to press when possible to turn games into a full-court affair. Offensively the Eagles hope to get out and run and force opponents to play that style.
“But if we’re not able to, try to adapt and play any style,” Floyd said. “We try to keep things simple and take as much thinking out of the game for the girls so all they have to do is go out and play and have fun.”
Turning Joplin into a winning program in the long run will involve convincing more girls to play. Floyd said there are athletes walking around the school who haven’t played basketball and he wants to see them join the team.
“We want to lay the foundation of what we want our program to be,” he said. “A blue collar mentality, girls excited to come to practice every day, do defense and rebounding and do the little things that don’t necessarily get your name in the paper but it’s the little things that help build a winning program.”
