Matt Hamilton/Daily Citizen-NewsChristian Heritage School's Zach Gentry is one of the top assist leaders in the area.

DALTON, Ga. — You’re in a packed gym for a local basketball game. You and the rest of the crowd are going crazy as a player knocks down shot after shot.

You hear the PA announcer loudly boast the scorer’s name over and over again.

But all the while, perhaps going unnoticed is what happens prior to the scorer getting the ball.

“They want to see the scoring and the shots, but what about the ones making the passes?” Dalton High School’s Tyis Love said.

Love is among the best in Whitfield and Murray counties when it comes to distributing the basketball, setting up teammates, gathering assists. The area boasts several point guards who excel in the art of the assist.

For some, it all starts with their vision.

“To me it’s all about seeing the court,” Murray County High School senior Katie Ashe said. “You really have to connect with your players to be able to read them. Say I get the ball on a fast break, they expect me to read the defense to know who to throw the ball down the court to, or if there’s too many men down the court, pull it back out and set up a play.”

“I think a good point guard has to be able to see the floor, I think that’s the main thing,” added Dalton’s Nasir Love-Porter. “My job is to get other people open, our shooting guards and big men. If you have the luxury of being a scoring guard, once they get open, it can open things up and you can see when the time’s right to take it yourself.”

For boys in the area, Southeast Whitfield High School’s Austin Brock leads when it comes to setting up teammates. The Raider junior has handed out 147 assists through the team’s first 21 games entering this week, an average of seven helpers per outing. Not too far behind is Christian Heritage School’s Zach Gentry, who’s accumulated 104 assists in his team’s 23 games.

“My role for my team, or any point guard, is to make your teammates more confident getting them the ball,” Brock said. “You lead the offense. You always got to keep your head up. They’ll look to you, if they see your head’s down, they’ll get down too. So you always got to stay up, keep your momentum up. You got to keep having fun no matter how the game’s going. If you’re down, you got to stay positive and try to find a way to turn it around.”

“To me, being a good point guard takes a lot of work,” Gentry said. “You spend a lot of time in the offseason working on ball handling and other things. What makes me good is, it’s not just me. There’s (Christian) Koneman, Sam (Dindoffer) and AJ (Kent). It really helps knowing you can drive and kick it to one of them and they’ll make a play.”

How does it all happen? What does a point guard have to see and how do they make split-second decisions?

“A big thing for point guards is their court awareness,” Love-Porter said. “ Playing a lot of basketball over time, you develop your awareness. It’s a great attribute to have. A lot of things are going on you have to process real fast. If I’m going to pass it here or take it myself. I’m reading the defense. I’m not just bringing the ball up for no reason. I’m seeing who they’re guarding hard and not guarding hard. You got to be able to know if I need to pass it or if I can take the shot.”

Gentry runs an up-tempo Christian Heritage offense. It requires him to be prepared for any situation. His play has been key to his team’s 21-2 start.

“Our main focus, when we get a (defensive) stop we want to push it and go,” he said. “When I get the ball, I’ll go down and see what’s going to work best. I can get the ball inside to Christian. If we’re beating them down the floor, AJ might be running with me and we’ll run a 2-on-1. A lot of the times, I’ll look for mismatches with Koneman, it’s really hard to guard him all over the floor. Evan (Lester) a lot of times can get an advantage on the guy guarding him, so I’ll get it to him down low.

“When I get the ball and we’re not in a certain set, we’ll sometimes do a pick-and-roll with Koneman coming to me. If the defenders switch, I’ll give it back to Koneman. He’s a post that doesn’t have to post up to score. Then, if Sam’s hot, I know if you get the ball to Sam and he’s hot he’ll hit a 3 nine out of 10 times.”

Recognizing the hot hand on the floor is key to tallying assists and getting the team in the best position to excel on offense.

“We definitely have some real good shooters on the team. I notice if one of them is really hot, I definitely want to get the ball to them,” Ashe said. “If I go down the court and see two or less men, I can just attack myself, take it to the rim. I see them dropping back, I’ll set up a good play for my posts to get inside or kick it out to Allison (Weaver) or Kirsten (Callahan) for a 3.”

THE COACHES’ VIEW

Northwest Whitfield High School girls coach Greg Brown acknowledges the importance of his point guards to the Lady Bruins’ offense.

“Having a great point guard is huge for us,” he said. “We’re a running, up-tempo, fast-paced team. You can’t do that unless you have a point guard that can, number one, take care of the ball, and number two, see the floor and is a willing passer. You need someone willing to share the ball and make good passes.”

Brown has the luxury of having two such players in senior MaLane Kyer and junior Tionna Baker. They’ve been critical to the team’s 21-3 record so far this season.

“Both have done a great job doing what we need them to do from that position,” Brown said. “We’re going to keep one of them out there for us at all times, but we’ll also play them together. Anytime you have two point guards on the floor together, I think it definitely helps you out. The big thing is, I don’t think it puts too much pressure on either one of them to do too much. They do what their job is and know the other one can come in and give them a break, then we rotate again. It’s a good situation and I think both have grown into the role and are comfortable with it.”

Dalton boys coach Mike Duffie also enjoys having multiple distributors from the guard spot, pairing Love-Porter up with his brother, Love.

“Everyone said, ‘Oh, you got a good team.’ Well, we got good pieces. But we got to work through the year and find out how those pieces fit,” Duffie said after a recent win against Sprayberry. “What we’re finding out is with Nasir and Tyis, with their speed and quickness and ability to score, you have to honor them. When you honor them, it creates opportunity. They’re good enough to find the opportunities. The combination of our bigs and our speed outside is huge.”

Love notes a fondness for his role, with the most enjoyable part of the game being making a flashy pass or coming up big defensively.

“It’s just something I love to do,” he said. “You make a great pass, set someone up for a shot, it gets them hyped. On defense, you make a steal, it gets everyone going.”

Love knew early on scoring wasn’t going to be his forte. So he dedicated himself to mastering the other aspects of the game.

“Coming from where I was early on, I knew I couldn’t score a lot,” he said. “I was not good at shooting so I worked on the other stuff I like to do like making great passes. I started seeing more and seeing stuff like I do. Defense is another thing. I worked on being a good defender and locking people down. I guard a lot of the better people on the other team. I’m not worried about scoring, to me it’s all about defense and making the right passes.”

RIGHT MIND

The mindset of a point guard isn’t something every player has. It can take a special person to willingly sacrifice his or her own totals in exchange for setting up others.

Like Love, the best often embrace the role of distributor.

“I like making other people look good,” said North Murray High School’s Sarah Plemons. “The point guard’s role is to make people look as good as they can. I’ve always been told, ‘Get your guards the ball. Get your shooters the ball. Then if the defense focuses on them take it yourself.’ That’s what my coaches all told me when I was younger and it rolled over into my high school career.”

Plemons’ plays the game with a pass-first mentality. She leads area girls with 121 assists, five per game. It’s something she believes is rapidly fading away from the game at all levels.

“I think that my role on the team as a point guard is to get my guards and the post the ball,” she said. “I look for them before I look for my own shot. I feel most point guards now won’t do that. They look for their own shots first. I feel more people think, ‘I gotta get my own points.’ I think the role of the point guard is to, yeah, get your points, but these days you see point guards averaging 15 points with three assists and three rebounds, when I think a point guard should get 10-12 assists and maybe 10-12 points. The assist ratio should be a lot higher.”

Not everyone is able to look past the individual spotlight and do what’s best for the team.

“It takes a lot, especially when you know you’re a guy that can score, but I’m more of a team player first,” Love-Porter said. “The faster you can get your team hot is a big factor. It takes a lot for someone to know how much it is to get the victory first. I get my team going first, once they get going it’s harder on the defense. You got to account for these other guys. It takes a special kind of guy to give up points and do more for the team.”

“You definitely have to have an unselfish mindset,” Brock added. “You got to care about the outcome more than what you did. You really got to be unselfish.”

According to Brock, the desire for a lot of players to see their point totals rise has led to assists becoming underappreciated.

“It’s not appreciated as much as scoring 20 or 30 points is, but I feel it’s something that should be looked at a lot more. It’s a big part of the game.,” he said. “If you put enough work in, a lot of people can do it, they’d rather score 20 or 30 points than give out 10 or 15 assists.”

Becoming adept at making an assist takes more than just time on the basketball court.

“It comes with a lot of off-the-court stuff,” Ashe said. “You have to really watch films to see what you missed in certain games and how you fix that. Off the court, you have to be a good person, good leader, good role model. You have to have the respect of your teammates. They have to trust your judgment to know you’re doing the right thing with the ball.”

Watching film can be a big part of a point guard’s preparation, getting to know the other team’s players, while understanding what the player can do better.

“I for sure watch a lot of film in my coach’s classroom,” Brock said. “I’ll sit there and watch the team we’re going to play or the team we just played. I’ll look at what I did, was it too much, or change this. I’ll do a lot of things off the court to get ready for the next game.”

KNOWING THE OPPONENT, KNOWING YOUR TEAMMATES

The more a point guard and his or her teammates know about their opponents, the more they can know what’s likely to work in a game.

“We play (Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe) Friday, we already started on them,” Plemons said. “We started (on Monday) looking at what they might change, how they might defend us. We start in advance working on what we know they’ll do. We look at if they’ll be in a zone, what’s going to work against that, or if they’ll be in man.”

For Love-Porter, having a “mental” edge is important, whether it comes from advance scouting or even the first moments on the floor.

“It’s a big mental thing. You single their great players out,” he said. ” You have to notice when their team is up and down, and if they’re playing harder in the first half or slacking off some guys. It gets more detailed as the game goes on.”

Perhaps the most common trait that ties the area’s best point guards together is their familiarity with their offense, especially getting in sync with their teammates.

“As I was growing up I always played with the girls I play with now,” Plemons said. “We know what each other’s thinking. I know where Kailee (Tipton)’s going to be and when she’s getting hot, so I know to get her the ball. Playing so much together really helps on the court.”

At Dalton, Love has been working with fellow juniors Jager Dickson and Jalen Westfield for a long time, establishing a great connection.

“I’ve been playing with these guys a while, I’ve been working out with Jager for a while. I know what he’s going to do and he knows what I’m doing. He knows when the pass is coming. Jalen, if he’s hot I’m gonna draw the defense in. He sees them coming to me and he’ll get open and I’ll get it to him.”

Helping others and the team to get on a roll is what it’s all about.

“It makes them feel good whenever I get them going,” Love said. “Jalen, whenever I get him the ball and he makes a shot, it brings up the energy. I feel it brings a lot of energy to the table to do those kinds of things.”

As teams in the area and around the state make a push for region titles and playoff spots, having a top-caliber floor general could go a long way in determining which teams go the furthest.

“Having a great point guard helps make everyone else on the team better,” Plemons said. “You need someone that will do the work and do the little things. If someone wants it and works for it, they’ll achieve anything.”