With nearly three decades of basketball coaching experience, John Gant usually knows what to expect from his players. And going into his third season coaching the Wiregrass Ranch High School girls, he expected to have a strong team.
But even he admits he didn’t see 19 wins in their first 20 games.
“I did expect a good year. I did not anticipate quite this good a record, but I did anticipate a good year for my kids,” he said.
But the Bulls have done just that, starting out hot with a six-game winning streak before losing on the road at district foe Steinbrenner. However, they bounced back from that defeat and have rattled off 13 straight wins (nine of those by double-digits), including an eight-point victory over Steinbrenner in the rematch.
Gant identifies a couple of important team traits that has led to the Bulls’ success. First, the team is unselfish, with scoring relatively evenly distributed and no one player dominating the stat sheet. And second, the Bulls play an up-tempo game with an eye for fast break opportunities and plenty of running up and down the court.
While Wiregrass Ranch’s record is a marked improvement over previous seasons, Gant said his coaching philosophy hasn’t changed. The difference is the team’s receptiveness to what the coaching staff teaches and their ability to come together and excel behind that philosophy.
“It is not difficult to teach” unselfish play, he said. “It is sometimes difficult for kids to buy into it. Really, it comes down to the kids and do they want to buy into it and really make themselves a team, a cohesive unit.”
Bulls captain Logan Seoane, a senior in her fourth year playing for her school, believes her teammates have done just that.
“A lot of us have played together for a long time, and we just clicked this year,” said Seoane, who plays center for Wiregrass Ranch. She also said that developing a fast-break philosophy has meant challenging practices with a lot of transition work, efforts to limit turnovers and a full-court mindset.
But the hard work has been worth it, and other teams have had trouble keeping up with the Bulls.
Still, with all the team’s success, Wiregrass Ranch sits tied with the Steinbrenner Seahawks for the lead in Class 7A-District 8. Both teams have lost just one district game — to each other. If both teams win out, Gant said that regular tiebreakers probably won’t settle the issue. A simple coin toss could determine the tournament seeding, in which the top two teams will advance into the playoffs.
The fact that a 19-1 record doesn’t assure them the top seed in the tournament for a playoff berth isn’t lost on Gant. But he said that tournament seeding isn’t that important, since there will be tough games no matter where they finish.
“We have one of the toughest districts in the state,” he said. That includes Sickles, currently 14-4 overall and 2-3 in the district, as well as Freedom, which is 13-3 overall, and 2-3 in the district.
Of course, no one can forget Steinbrenner, which is currently 19-2, and 5-1 in the district.
“And we’re all very good,” Gant said. “You’re going to have a tough opponent no matter where you are.”
Rather than worry about tournament seeding, part of the team’s philosophy is to just take things one game at a time and not look ahead or take anything for granted. In fact, the coach believes that there’s nothing to take for granted yet, since they haven’t guaranteed themselves anything.
“We’re 19-1, and we’re 5-1 in district,” Gant said. “What’s it mean? Absolutely nothing if you don’t take care of business.”
Their next piece of business is a home game against Freedom on Jan. 8.
His team has also bought into that message as well. When asked how far she thought the team could go this year, Seoane responded with an answer that would make her coach proud: “We just have to take it step by step.”
