With a young squad, the Lamar School girls basketball team is a work in progress.

First-year head coach Amy Bass is hopeful her squad will eventually resemble its new gymnasium: a finished product.

For now, though, following Thursday night’s home win against Macon Central Academy, she’ll take the lessons to be learned from a single game and move forward.

“We come away and try to look at the things we need to improve,” Bass said. “For us, our time of possession is very minimal, and that’s something we’ve been working on. We only maintained possession of the ball less than 10 seconds, so we’ve got to fix that. I talked to them about our full-court press, about how we were in foul trouble in the third quarter and they’re shooting one-and-one, so we need to be able to play defense properly, and I as a coach have to teach them to play proper defense and the full-court press.

“At the end of the day, though, they got their job done, and that’s what we want.”

Debreasha Powe, Katie Shaffer and Ambreah Waters combined to score 45 of the Lady Raiders’ 49 points. Power led in scoring with 19, followed by Shaffer with 14 and Waters with 12. Powe, a seventh-grade post player, said she didn’t try to do too much and just took the best shots available.

“It just depends on how the defense is playing me,” Powe said. “If I’m open, take a shot and follow it.”

Bass’ varsity roster features just three seniors, and of her three leading scorers Thursday, two of them were sophomores and one was a middle-schooler. She also shares many of her players with other sports, making it a longer adjustment period than teams with girls who focused solely on basketball in the offseason.

“We have a lot of athletes who play soccer, a lot of our girls are cheerleaders, a lot of girls run cross country, and all of those sports happen prior to basketball,” Bass said. “It’s a challenge to get them in the gym and get them ready for basketball before the season starts. Soccer season ends in October, and we’re playing basketball in November.

“One of the biggest challenges this year is that we started our regular season much later than other teams. We played our first game at (Jackson) Prep on the road, and they had already played six or seven games, so we’re still in that boat, but we’re getting there fast.”

Powe said Bass is a great coach who is trying to mold her team into one that can win games long-term.

“She pushes us hard and wants us to become a great athletic team that can score, have great defense and work hard,” Powe said.

If there’s one thing that has Bass especially excited, it’s the school’s new gymnasium, located across from the high school building.

“It’s state-of-the-art,” Bass said. “It’s exciting for our girls. It’s evidence of our priorities at Lamar, which is excellence. We certainly place priorities on the classroom and academics, and we have that same level of standard for our athletic programs as well, and this is evidence of that.”

Said Powe, “It’s awesome. It’s my first year here, but we’re going to win in this gym.”

LAMAR BOYS 60,

MACON CENTRAL 21 

Luke Graham scored 22 points to lead Lamar as it rolled past Macon Central Academy Thursday.

Matt Harper led in rebounding with seven, and Tate Thompson and Nash Acton both tallied six boards. Harper also had four blocks, and William Lamar dished out two assists.

Lamar (2-4) will play at Wayne Academy today.