©2009 NPT PHOTO BY SETH BUTLER

Dylan Dockery goes up against Cody Underwood
of Northview on Friday night at Maury Middle School.

DANDRIDGE-Basketball is quickly beginning for area schools and it's the same for Newport Grammar School.

The Warriors and Lady Warriors tip-off their home opener on Monday evening against Rush Strong Middle School and the two teams have been preparing for the 2009-10 season in the Tommy Bettis Memorial Tournament at Maury Middle School.

The two teams have split in their opening two nights in pool play in the tournament.

While the results have been mixed and do not count towards their regular season record, Warriors and Lady Warriors coach Bryan Valentine noted that the teams have played tough competition in the first two rounds of the tournament on Thursday and Friday.

"This is tough competition for us," Valentine said. "We use it to come down here and get better. It's a whole other league to be playing this kind of competition every night."

Both Newport Grammar teams battled to a split in their first two rounds of pool play in the tournament. The Warriors defeated Westview of Morristown, but fell to Northview of Sevier County; while the Lady Warriors did just the opposite.

The Warriors ran off and left Westview in their rear view mirrors, behind a game-high 25 points from eighth grader Dylan Dockery. However, in the victory, NGS still struggled to connect from short-range shots.

The inability to hit the close shots cost the Warriors on Friday night as they dropped a 50-41 decision to Northview.

A lack of depth also cost NGS as they wore down physically and suffered from foul trouble throughout the contest.

"We're hurting with our lack of depth," said Valentine, who is performing double-duty coaching both boys and girl's teams at NGS. "We do not have a lot of offensive firepower off our bench right now, so when we have to sub it really hurts us scoring wise.

"We have to find a way to get our bench better if we want to see our record be good this year," Valentine said.

Meanwhile, Friday night was a different night for the Lady Warriors opposed to their loss on Thursday night.

Facing a powerful West View team, which feeds into the Morristown West High School system, the Lady Warriors picked a bad night to have a poor shooting performance. However, the rebound on Friday was nice as the Lady Warriors led 16-0 at the end of a quarter and 26-6 at halftime.

NGS won the game 52-12 after shutting out Northview in the fourth quarter.

"We are a young team and our girls don't have a lot of experience at a highly competitive level," Valentine said. "We will have some ups and downs, but if we can consistently make our shots, we should be in decent shape to compete."

The Lady Warriors were in shape to compete on Friday as they had Taylor Crowder and Kinsley Ford both scoring in double figures. Allison Ball and McKenzie Gregg both scored eight for Newport Grammar.

Valentine is hopeful that the success seen by both teams carries over to their home-opener on Monday.

"We need a big crowd out to see us on Monday night," Valentine said. "We've got an important game for us against Rush Strong as our home opener."

That is sandwiched around an appearance in the Tommy Bettis Tournament on Tuesday against Carter and next Saturday's tournament bracket play.