The Mexico girls basketball team had to win competitive games down the stretch last season when they made their run to the Class 4 quarterfinals.

Mexico at Westran Shootout Photo Gallery

On Thursday, the Lady Bulldogs played only scrimmages, but the upcoming roster already has some experience in close games. In its first scrimmages of the summer, Mexico lost one-point games to Marceline and Westran before losing by a wider margin against hot-shooting Paris.

Head coach Makenzie Mudd said the first two games really “could have gone either way” and thought Mexico accomplished what it needed to do in its first summer games.

“In summer ball, it's a lot more physical with a lot less foul-calling,” Mudd said. “You have to work through it. We’re learning a lot today, especially a lot of younger players that haven’t played varsity before.”

From what Mudd saw against Marceline and Paris, she said the Lady Bulldogs needed to close out on shooters better. The main area Mexico will need to address is rebounding, according to Mudd, because all-conference and all-district player Claire Hudson graduated as the team’s leading rebounder last season. The Lady Bulldogs were outsized by Marceline but couldn’t grab enough rebounds to earn more victories.

However, Mudd said she likes what she has seen so far from her team, particularly with their ball movement. Winter is months away, but she said she has a good idea of how Mexico will look defensively. 

“Defensively, we worked on our zone a little bit today,” Mudd said. “That’s something I want to run a lot during the season. We have a lot of smaller players — not as much height but a lot of speed. We’re going to try that 2-3 zone, and we did a great job of rotating around.”

Alyssa Miller and all-conference and all-district player Scottie Smith are coming off standout freshman seasons, and point guard Grace Hudson was back on the court with them on Thursday. It is the first time Hudson played in a game since her all-conference and all-district season was cut short last year because of a knee injury. 

Along with her returning starters, Mudd said there have been some other girls that have looked good so far this summer. She expects them to have bigger roles on varsity this season.

“Both Bentley McCarty and Madison Bickell played a little bit of varsity last year,” Mudd said. “They showed a lot of promise, using a lot of things that they learned last year from watching on the varsity bench most of the games.”

Mudd said there will be opportunities for improvement by the end of the summer through practices and two more shootouts on June 16 at Montgomery County and June 20 at Paris. 

“We didn’t have wins, but overall, it was a really good day and learning experience,” Mudd said. It’s not really wins or losses in the summer, but it’s more what we get out of it and how we grow.”