The Greenville Tiger girls basketball team spent the Thanksgiving break playing basketball. The Lady Tigers received an invitation to compete in the Tuscaloosa Thanksgiving Tournament.

Greenville made the trip on Wednesday and played later that night against Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa. The Lady Tigers did not receive a warm reception from the Lady Patriots.

"There was a lot of good talent at the tournament," said Ronald Bogan, coach of the Lady Tigers. "They beat us by 50. Their girls were much bigger than our girls, but the things that I admired about them was that they got up and down the court. They hustled, 50 points of the 80 they scored were on lay-ups. Second game we played was Central-Tuscaloosa and beat them by 30.

That shows the tenacity of this team, they were beaten by 50 and then came back and won by 30. The second day we just ran out of gas, we scored 15 points in the first quarter, the other team didn't score any. We ended up losing by 10 and that was against Tuscaloosa County High. Most of the schools that we played were 6A and 5A schools, which I thought was pretty good."

The Lady Tigers went on to finish fourth in the tournament out of eight teams. They lost to Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa and Tuscaloosa County but knocked of Central High of Tuscaloosa.

"I had one coach and one official tell me that this was the most disciplined team that they had seen during the whole tournament and for us to finish fourth says a lot about this team and their work ethic," said Bogan.

Despite the finish amidst the competition, Bogan still sees where his team needs to improve.

"With it being early in the season tells us where we are. We really need to work on conditioning," said Bogan. "Which is really what, I thought hurt us in that last game. We ran out of gas playing three games in four days. We haven't really had any competition in Georgiana and Central-Hayneville hurt us too. But coming back from a 50-point loss to a 30-point win showed that these girls have character."

Now, both the Lady Tigers and the Tigers have to turn their focus to Tuesday night and to the weekend.

For the boys, the only competition that they have seen so far has been Central-Hayneville and Georgiana. Those two games resulted in a 1-1 record for the Tigers.

Instead of playing over the break, they practiced to get ready for Tuesday's opponent.

"They try to push the ball up the court and run a fast paced style of play so I know that we'll have to get back on defense," said Randy Fullington, coach of the Tigers. "We'll have to react according to how we respond to their press. If we react to it and break then they'll play an aggressive man-to-man defense.

We played fairly well against Georgiana, the things I stressed at practice Wednesday and Friday were defensive practice. I stressed getting back on defense and knowing our different defensive sets and We have cues that we work with against an offense as far as how they bring the ball down the court and we have sets against made baskets and missed baskets that requires a lot of focus. We work on everybody concentrating and focusing on every trip down the court."

Fullington has not yet seen the Jaguars play, he does know their coach.

"They are well coached," said Fullington. "Tommy dukes played college ball at AUM while I played at Faulkner so we played against each other as players in college and now we coach against each other. He's a real fundamental coach so I know they'll be sound."

Scores for Tuesday's games were not available at Press time.

The Tigers will be at home this weekend against Carroll Ozark on Friday and Charles Henderson on Saturday. Both of the games are slated to start at 5 p.m. with the B team boys opening up the action.