3rd Region Hoops— You’ll be hard pressed to find many communities who get up for girls basketball like the beautiful people of Brandenburg KY! The Lady Wave Legacy is one of success, passion, expectations & dedication. They do not “hope” to contend for regional titles, they “EXPECT” to contend for Regional Titles. Coming into the 2023/24 season, there were things that were set in stone & there were question marks as well.. what was set in stone? Peyton Bradley is back for another big time season. What else? The Lady Wave would depend heavily on its Trio of Annabelle Babb, Peyton Bradley & Paige Medley. Those 3 are basically all that returned for Dina Hackert with any amount of meaningful varsity experience. Now to the questions.. Who would step up to help the tabbed BIG 3? Where would the depth come from? Juniors Savannah Triplett & Kaylee Rider had big summers & have been placed into much bigger roles thus far, as expected. Miranda French has also saw increased minutes through the 1st 5 games. Triplett, Rider & French have been thrown into the fire of high level varsity action and have simply been forced to figure it out. Those 3 have had growing pains & have struggled at times but have also showed toughness & fearlessness. All of the above should be expected by the Lady Wave Faithful as it is unfamiliar territory for them. The experience will grow & one has to believe so to will the production, but for now the weight of the world has been placed on the shoulders of Babb, Bradley & Medley. Meade Co will go as far as the big 3 take them. Peyton Bradley has been stellar. She’s surpassed 2,000 career points. She’s had a 39 point, 15 rebound performance on the road VS Daviess County & she’s leading the region in scoring at 25ppg & is shooting 50% from 3 to go along with 7 rebounds per game as well. She’s as much of a lock to win the 3rd Region Player of The Year as Santa is to leave the North Pole and provide the world with smiles and happiness on Christmas Morning. Seriously, she really is. Annabelle Babb has been phenomenal for Coach Hackert, averaging 16ppg & 7rpg on 51% shooting from the field. She is also the motor that makes the Lady Wave Defense impressive as well. She guards the opposing teams best player nightly and you could argue that she’s the glue that holds this thing together. Paige Medley was the teams second leading scorer last season behind Peyton Bradley so the expectations were high for her coming into the season. She’s upped her scoring totals from 12.5ppg last season to 16ppg this season. She erupted for 25 points in the Lady Waves season opening victory over CAL & hit 6 threes that night. She’s been big for the Big Green in fact we think she’s as much of a deciding factor in how legit this team is as a contender, as anyone on this roster, including Peyton Bradley. (We’ll elaborate more & you’ll understand where we’re coming from, just keep reading.) As we’ve mentioned, the success of this ball club depends so much on the success of the big 3 & so far, they’ve delivered. We’ve said all of that, to say this.. from today (12-14-2023) to 12-30-2023 we will learn a whole bunch about the legitimacy of this teams contention status & much of the outcome of that, will come from Paige Medley. No pressure though.. Meade Co has as good of a home court advantage as anyone in the 3rd Region. In fact, the Lady Wave are a combined 18-2 dating back the last 2 seasons in front of the Brandenburg Faithful. It’s darn near impossible to beat Dina Hackert when she’s at home. Where are we going with this? Let’s just get straight to the point. At Home, Meade Co is as good as anyone & so to is that heralded BIG 3, especially Paige Medley. Medley has shot 11-22 from 3 at home but is shooting 1-10 from 3 on the road. Those home shooting numbers are terrific. Here’s the problem, the Lady Wave go on the road for their next 9 contests from now until December 30th. The competition will be great over the coming weeks and the Lady Wave will need Medley to shoot the ball better if the Lady Wave are gunna keep their head above water during this holiday stretch. Do we crown a regional champion on December 30th? No, of course not but these holiday classics pay dividends to a teams long term success year in & year out & typically show us a few things that lead us to either question a team’s legitimacy or solidify a teams status as a contender. No, we’re not singling Medley out in a negative way. Obviously she’s not the only player in the region that has struggled on the road VS at home. It’s simply thoughts & opinions. If Meade Co comes out of the holiday season with a .500+ record, you will look at the holiday stretch and see that Medley’s numbers increased drastically. No, no one player can shoulder the loss of a game and that’s not what we’re implying here. If you take that from this article, you’ve missed the point. The purpose of this article is to stress the importance of Medley (& others) to this edition of the Lady Wave. So much attention goes to the success of Peyton Bradley (& rightfully so) but for some reason, the feel is the success that Medley (& others) will have (or won’t have) on the road will go a long way towards telling us how legit this Meade County team is. After all, you’ve gotta go on the road to win at the highest level. One last time, there’s much to be learned about Meade Co in the coming weeks! That’s all folks!