The Vidalia Lady Vikings basketball team may have only won four games last season, but their overall mark isn’t the tell all of their season.

“We only won a few games last year, but we were in a lot of them that we should’ve won,” Viking head coach Fred Marsalis said. “We were never blown out.”

Perhaps the biggest thorn in their side was when Tierra Bell, their go-to player, went down with an injury.

“Tierra tore up her knee and missed a lot of the district season,” Marsalis said. “Missing that, (Brehonor) Harris had to step up, and she did that.”

Now, with both back and ready to run the team, Vidalia hopes to make some noise this year, beginning with Bell, who is entering her final season and Harris, who is a part of a strong sophomore class.

“We have one senior and three sophomores coming back,” Marsalis said. “We’ve also got three freshmen and three first time players. We’re going to be competitive.”

Marsalis said he has seen progress from the new faces, but acknowledges they have a ways to go.

“They have matured since we’ve started conditioning, and they are going to get playing time,” he said. “They know going in they’ve got a lot they have to learn. That is where we are now, in the process of doing a lot of teaching and rebuilding.”

Harris, who is the leader of the sophomore class, said she anticipates the sophomores of this team to make an impact.

“As we came from the junior high, we pushed ourselves to play more as a team,” she said. “It just encourages us to keep playing. No one stops, and we all play together and work as one.”

Bell and Harris will be the key factors in the team’s success this season. Both are scoring threats and Marsalis expects them to carry the Lady Vikings on offense.

“Brehonor led the team in scoring when Tierra got hurt last year,” Marsalis said. “I look for her and Tierra to share a lot of the scoring. I don’t put a lot of pressure on either of them as far as being that person.”

And Harris and Bell both said they don’t feel pressured at all.

“It is a habit,” Bell said of scoring.

The Lady Vikings plan to wear down teams with a technical style of play that sets up offensive plays and also forces opponents to scheme against a zone defense.

“We are a control team,” Marsalis said. “We don’t do a lot of running. We all run when we have to, when you get the break, but our basic offensive set is control. We like to be in control of the ball at all times. I’ve never been a running style coach.”

Defensively, Marsalis said he runs a zone simply because of the players he has.

“We do a man-to-man zone press,” he said. “I play a lot of zone because of my personnel. You can’t run them to death, so we lay back a lot. We take advantage of what we are given.”

With the season right around the corner, Marsalis believes this year’s Lady Vikings team could be an unexpected competitor.

“I think we are going to surprise some people because we are getting better leadership than we’ve ever gotten from the kids on the floor,” he said. “The participation, the want and the hustle is there. We really expect to be better.”