2025-26 Girls Basketball Preview: Growing in the Greenhouse

Last season for Greenup County might not have produced a lot of wins, but it produced plenty of experience for a fairly young team.

As far as coach Kirk Ruggles is concerned, that experience is priceless.

“You could see the growth last year,” Ruggles said. “The schedule was done when I got here last year. We were probably a little bit over-scheduled. Our first two games last year were on the road at the best team in the 15th Region and then the preseason No. 2 on back-to-back nights. I don’t know if that was something we were quite mature enough to be able to deal with last year. But you could see growth, and you could see something positive coming from it every night.”

The Musketeers return most of their offensive production from last season, including leading scorer Maddy Steele, but will look to replace the points lost by second-leading scorer Bella Stith, who graduated.

Ruggles said there is plenty of talent to turn to as leaders on this year’s team.

“With Maddy, I kind of sat down and talked to her. I feel like Maddy Steele had an All-Area season last year. She essentially averaged a double-double,” Ruggles said. “She had a rock-solid year for us. Dharia Crum’s our other senior. I think Dharia’s going to have an enormous year. She played really, really well defensively, and I think you are going to see more of the Dharia defensively that you’ve seen before I got there this year.”

With more experience under their belt, the Musketeers have more goals they want to accomplish and aim to do so through the hard work put in during the offseason.

“We have preached culture to a nauseating degree, probably for these girls,” Ruggles said with a laugh. “We are trying to build culture and that is our No.1 goal. We want that culture to include playing hard, taking care of the basketball, and not backing down from anybody in any situation. So, we are working toward that.”

Ruggles knows there will be roadblocks along the way. In particular, turnovers and lack of possessions might be areas where the Musketeers will need to dig deep to overcome.

“Most nights, we were 20-plus turnovers at halftime, mid-30s for the game, and you just cannot compete giving up that many possessions,” Ruggles said. “As we move into this year and we look at goals, we have to cut that number way back. We have to get to the offensive glass more if we are going to continue to be turnover-prone.”

Ruggles is excited to see how much his team has grown by getting them into real-time game moments, and knows it’s all a result of the work the girls have put in.

“It just gives them an opportunity to showcase the hard work that they’ve done,” Ruggles said. “As coaches, there is nothing that we are going to do as a team that is ever going to be credited to us. We just try to facilitate and try to get these kids excited about being a part of the program. I am having fun. I do hear that a lot with the kids.”

Everyone on the team wants to make this year a successful one. In order to do that, Ruggles’ top priority is to limit self-inflicted damage.

“We have to cut down on turnovers,” Ruggles said. “If we can keep our season average under 20, we are in good shape. We have to shoot the ball from the free-throw line a whole lot better than what we’re shooting in practice. and night in, night out, especially those six games that we have for district seed games, there has to be a very distinct difference in who played harder on a given night.”