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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

After another successful season where they reached the 2024 Elite Eight, the Pelham Panthers hope to carry their championship standard and culture into the 2024-25 season.

“We’re excited about this upcoming season,” Pelham coach Crosby Morrison said. “We’re not looking to try to track who we’re going to match up with, who we’re going to meet up with, we’re really going to just kind of focus on us this year and focus on the process of getting back to where we need to go and creating good habits in practice and creating good habits and creating a culture of winning at practice and in our locker room.”

A big part of that will start from the foundation returning from last year as four starters are back for the Panthers. They’ll also have four seniors, including a pair of experienced players in Jaeda Hill and Shea Gallagher, leading the way on the court.

Morrison said that they’ve learned the standard from those who have come before them and are now ready to pass those lessons along to the next generation.

“They’ve been with us since they were freshmen,” Morrison said of Hill and Gallagher. “These two actually played JV for two years and then made big impacts with us last year as juniors. And so, they’ve been a part of the program, they have seen what it takes, the grind that it takes and also the culture that you have to create in practice about good habits, work ethic, and accountability and responsibility to create that winning culture. I’m so excited for what they’re going to do this senior year.”

For Hill, leading looks like helping everyone come together as a unit and learn the right way to do things.

“Just keeping everybody on task and like keeping everybody together as a team, making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do and that they’re staying out of trouble,” Hill said.

On the floor, Pelham will mostly look similar to how it did last season as the team continues to lean heavily on its defensive identity.

For Morrison, while the years go by and the offensive contributors change, one of the constants is how they like to play defense, and for the players, their goal is to become more sound on that end of the court this season.

“Our big thing is being a defensive menace, and that is Pelham girls basketball. For the past seven years that I’ve been there, that is what we like to do and how we like to play,” Morrison said. “We will have some good key scorers, but we will also have a bench full of people that are willing to put their bodies on the line to play defense and willing to fight for each other and their teammates. So, we’re just going to stick to us and, the offense it depends on who we’re playing and depends on what kind of runs we’re in, but defensive principles should always stay the same, and so that’s what we’re really going to focus on.”

On offense though, the Panthers will have a bit of a different look. Over the past few years with guards like Laci Gogan, Karma Wynn and now Tee King, the program has been led by its backcourt play, but this year, expect some more size in the post.

Experienced players like Hill and Gallagher will take that mantle early on with the 5-foot-9 Hill playing center and Gallagher bringing the energy and hustle to the boards as she did last season.

This year though, they’ll have some help, albeit some inexperienced help. 6-foot-1 All-State volleyball star Camryn McMinn will return to the basketball court for her senior year, which will be her first season since eighth grade.

She’ll be joined by freshman such as Hannah Bankston, Chi Chi Ajinwo and Janiah Harris who will be expected to grow into the post players of the future as they learn this season and help provide a new dimension to the Pelham offense.

“The last couple of years we’ve looked so small, the teams that we compete against, we look like a middle school team, but, we actually have some size returning and coming to us,” Morrison said. “We’re excited about using that size to create some better guard play for us and be able to get up and down and work through the post this year.”

The backcourt will continue to be a strength, starting with the Panthers’ biggest scoring threat in junior guard Tee King.

Already a 1,000-point scorer and Shelby County Player of the Year finalist as an underclassman, King will now take the lead in the offense as an upperclassman.

The Panthers hope to open up opportunities for her and fellow guards Ally Barfield, Taylor Hollingsworth and Caroline Hamby through their post play to help them not have to create as many chances for themselves on the ball.

Morrison also tabbed King as one of the players who needs to step up as a leader this year. While King already has years of varsity experience as a junior, she’s always been behind the upperclassmen, and that changes now with Wynn, Alayna Noble and Gerren Ingram gone.

“She’s always been the young kid that tags along and helps, but this year she’s going to have to really step up and be a leader for us,” Morrison said of King. “We have some players that ended up playing a lot of minutes towards the end of our season because of injuries last year that got some big-time minutes in some big-time games and looking for some leadership and some big-time impact from them returning.”

Those injuries played a crucial part in the Panthers’ journey to the Elite Eight, most notably when Wynn tore her ACL in sub-regionals. While she ultimately finished out the game and remained a coaching presence from the bench, it left a big hole on the court during the most important stretch of the season.

However, multiple key players stepped up and helped Pelham continue its season. King logged 19 points in the Sweet 16 win over Chilton County and nearly willed the team to victory over Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa with 27 points against one of the top teams in Class 6A.

That experience will now help the Panthers as those young players who were thrust into big temporary roles will now take more permanent jobs as key contributors this season.

“We always preach in practice, ‘Next man up,’” Morrison said. “You never know in basketball and really any sport who could go down at any minute, and you have to be confident in your preparation to step up in that moment, and last year with Karma going down, we had to start two freshmen guards that were scared to death. And those lights are really bright when you see them for the first time, and thankfully Shea had been there before and we had some others that had been there before to help prepare them for it. But there’s nothing like getting out there on the floor and seeing the lights and seeing how big the court is, and it was a great experience for them to have, and so we’re going to try to build upon that experience to get back there.”

The continued success of Pelham’s girls basketball program is a testament to how the coaches and experienced players develop young stars for the future.

For players like Gallagher, now it’s their turn to not only live up to the standard of success on the court but teach the players behind them how to maintain it when they leave.

“I know we have a very young team and so it’s very important that we demonstrate what each practice should be,” Gallagher said. “We set the standards of our expectations, so that we can leave a good legacy that was created before us. And so, when we came into Pelham, we already knew the standards and everything, so it’s important that we keep showing them how each day should go so we can make it far.”