Littleton, Gibbs to be key pieces of Lady Royals backcourt

A clean slate. A new beginning. A fresh start.

That’s what the Mason County girls’ basketball team has been given with the arrival of new coach Kevin Bundy, replacing Brad Cox at the helm after six seasons.

Early on in practice that means a chance to earn your role and define what it will be on the team, Bundy admitting the day he met his new team that he didn’t know any of them.

For Macey Littleton and Allison Gibbs, they’ve been taking advantage of that early on in practice.

They’ve caught the eye of Bundy with their leadership and hard work in practice.

“Macey Littleton has been an absolutely phenomenal leader, on and off the floor. Really helping get everything organized, when I came in here I literally didn’t know any of them. Macey was the one who helped me learn how to communicate with the team in terms of social media type stuff. Do we email, what’s been done in the past?,” Bundy said. “Allison Gibbs has really played well in between the lines. I look for big things out of her, I really expect her to play hard. I really, really do.”

The two are expected to take on a lot of the ball handling duties for the Lady Royals, after losing backcourt members Milyn Henry and Rachel Payne from a season ago. Littleton has been on varsity since seventh grade, having already played in 89 games in her career. At the point guard position, her experience is unmatched on the team and has also has shown her shooting ability, knocking down 63 3-pointers and hitting 71 percent of her free throw attempts over the past three seasons.

Her extensive experience should help even more with her main duty, handling the ball and setting up the offense.

“Being a point guard is very stressful. Just have to make sure you have everybody in the right spot, setting up plays and trying not to turn the ball over,” Littleton said, who has really noticed the difference in the team early on in practice.

“I can already tell we’ve got tremendously better on the defensive end and we’re sharing the ball pretty well. We do a lot of defensive drills.”

Gibbs played sparingly her sophomore season and showed some flashes off the bench last season. She enters as one of five seniors on the team and her role is expected to expand even more this year, taking on some point guard duties. Her main focus on the floor comes on the defensive end and setting up her teammates.

“Really been working on my defense, I feel like that’s the best part of my game. Ball handling, we’ve worked on that, but mostly defense. We’ve really worked on that a lot,” Gibbs said. “I don’t score a lot, but I’d rather pass. I like seeing my teammates score.”

Now what sounds like a competition between the two for the point guard minutes isn’t the case. Bundy is comfortable if they’re both on the floor at times.

“I’m going to play the five girls that give us the best chance to win. I expect Allison and Macey to be on the floor together at times, I expect them both of them to handle the ball at times no question,” Bundy said, who had a similar situation with the 10th Region champs at Bishop Brossart.

“We had more than one floor general and that was a great luxury to have.”

Gibbs hopes that’s the case with their familiarity of each other on the floor.

“Me and Macey have been playing together for a while. We just have that little bond, we know what we’re going to do, how it’s going to happen, we just click when we get on the floor,” Gibbs said.

Littleton, Gibbs and the Lady Royals will get their first chance to show what they look like December 1 when they open the season at St. Henry. Their first two home games come December 3 and 4, hosting Harlan and Bracken County in the Lady Royals Showcase at The Fieldhouse.