HINESVILLE --
Tigers
The Bradwell Institute Tigers basketball program is looking to constantly build for success.
After going 2-23 in the 2019, the Tigers improved to 5-13 in a shortened season in 2020 during head coach Ty Randolph’s first season with the team.
Randolph, a former Harlem Globetrotter has spent time on the highest level in the pros along with his high school coaching experience.
“I’m a journeyman as most know,” Randolph said about his past endeavors. “I started here in the high school ranks and moved on to the NBA to do some player development. Then I came back to high school with a situation of trying to win a high school championship. This is my second year here at Bradwell.”
The Tigers’ head coach wants to return what he has been given to his players by engraining leadership qualities through mentoring and coaching.
“I want to shape young men,” Randolph said. “In society nowadays kids need a lot of guidance. So, I’m just trying to give back.”
Playing the game of basketball with integrity is the main goal to Randolph.
“The biggest thing with these guys is teaching them how to play the right way,” he said. “They were always a hungry group of kids, but the biggest thing is expanding their IQ and playing team basketball at the end of the day.”
Though they made strides in the 2020 season, the Tigers’ basketball team is coming in with something to prove this year.
“My first year, it was a lot of growing pains trying to implement a system,” Randolph said. “The kids have done an awesome job at buying in and working around the clock to try to be one of the elite teams here in the state of Georgia. I think they did a heck of a job learning. We took a lot of games hard but at the end of the day we grew a lot. Over the summer, you could really see that hard work paying off. I could say coming into this season that these guys got a chip on their shoulder. Every night that they step on the floor I think you would see that passion and desire for them to be successful.”
From the starting five to the last on the bench, Randolph knows that every player will play a major part of the team’s success.
“All of them are key,” he said about his team. “At the end of the day, we always say that everyone has a role. Every piece to the puzzle is real valuable. Jaylin Frasier is a guy who I think is a diamond in the rough. He’s a gym rat and blue-collar type guy. He’s really worked on his game and will be a guy that leads and guides us. In the backcourt, you’re going to have Tahshaun Frasier and Ja’mar Price. Two very good guards that learned on the job. Kaieem Riddick and Jonathan Bryant are two key returners alongside Tahshaun and Ja’mar. Rishard Money is an exceptional all-around player. Of course, we hang our hat on the bigman in the middle, Elyjah Thurmon who should be solid along with Andre Milner and a few others. But the biggest thing right now is all of us doing our part night in and night out as a team. D’mari Guelly is a great addition coming up from JV. DJ Pasley will start the season on injured reserve but is the man when he is healthy.”
The ultimate feat that the Tigers want to reach is concluding the season with a win.
But not just any win, a championship win.
“Our most important goal is to win our last game of the season,” Randolph said. “So, if anybody knows what that mean it is to bring the silver trophy back to here to Hinesville. We know it’s a marathon, not a sprint. So, night in and night out, we’re just concentrating on getting better and capitalizing on every opportunity we can get. But we always focus on running the season. We always start with the gold, which is the region championship, and we’ll hang our hat on the silver, which is the state title. Right now, we understand it’s a step-by-step process and value each game and take it one at a time.”
The Tigers will take the court when they face off against crosstown rival Liberty County on Saturday, Nov. 20.
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LADY TIGERS
It’s been 26 years since current Bradwell Institute Lady Tigers head basketball coach Faye Baker began her coaching career.
All have been spent at Bradwell.
The Hinesville homer even graduated from the school before going off to Georgia Southern University to become a multisport collegiate athlete.
“I’ve been at Bradwell my entire coaching career since 1995,” she said. “I graduated from here. This is my hometown. I went to college at Georgia Southern University and played softball and basketball there then came back and got into education. I didn’t pursue education at the beginning, but I ended up getting my teaching certification and came back and been here ever since.”
In the 2020 season, Baker led the Lady Tigers to an 8-10 record.
During the season, they would run into the challenges of game cancellations due to COVID-19 and the inexperience of players.
“Last year was definitely a hard year,” Baker said reflecting on the season. “It was kind of hard to get in sync with your team because we would start rolling and then we might have a game cancelled because of COVID and might not play for seven days or so. We were just happy just to get through that with everybody making it through and not getting sick. It was tough. We had a lot of young kids on our team and kids with a lot of potential. But they were just young and didn’t have a lot of floor experience, so we struggled a little bit last year.”
The engine that will keep the Lady Tigers going is the leadership are juniors, forward Bailey Gilmore, and guard Taniyah Bowman.
Gilmore averaged 8.3 points and 6.6 rebounds in 2020 as 6 feet 3 inch forward holds offers from: East Georgia, Kennesaw State, Anderson, Lipscomb, South Alabama, Morgan State, UNC Asheville, Tennessee State, and Tennessee-Chattanooga.
Bowman was the leading score from the guard position, averaging 20.9 points per game.
But Baker feels that every player on the team is as equally important as the next if they all play their role.
“We definitely heavily rely on the experience of the kids from last year,” she said. “Bailey Gilmore is getting quite a few looks at the next level. Colleges have been in and out watching us practice. She had a good AAU run this past year as well as a good summer. We’re looking for her to lead us as well as our point guard Taniyah Bowman. She’s also a junior this year. She’s lightning quick. As those two go, we’ll go. But we also have a good core of kids surrounding them. I think we’re going be deep and play a lot of people that’s going to help us in our rotation. We’re looking for a lot of those girls to really play some specific parts and give us some valuable minutes.”
Baker wants to make a championship run but she’s not looking that far right now.
As of now, she wants to firmly set schemes for her team to follow when the season starts up.
“To win a state championship is always the goal but you always want to be realistic as well,” Baker said. “Right now, with these kids, we’re looking at short term goals right now. And that is to get ourselves in the best basketball shape that we can get in. We’re trying to learn to be a defensive minded team and want to establish that because you never know when your offense may be off, but defense is something you can play every night. So, we just feel like if we can learn to play aggressive, team defense, team ball, unselfish ball, not worrying about who scores and who does not score. If we can get that type of mentality, then we feel like we’ll have a chance in any ball game that we’re in.”
The Lady Tigers will take the court when they face off against crosstown rival Liberty County on Saturday, Nov. 20.