TURNAROUND TEAM: VI women's hoops on the way up

There’s something very different about this year’s edition of the Virginia Intermont women’s basketball team.

Namely, the Cobras are good.

Many other not-so-chipper words could be used to describe the VI teams of the past six years, squads that combined for a .368 winning percentage and lost games with scores like 117-38.

But at VI, the past has been packed up, sealed and stuffed in the attic like a box of woebegone toys.

With four regular-season games remaining, VI stands at 17-9 overall and is in a three-way tie for second place in the Appalachian Athletic Conference with a 10-4 mark in league play, receiving votes in the national NAIA Division II poll and hot off a seven-game winning streak that was snapped Saturday with a narrow loss to Union.

“It’s a lot easier to get up and come into work,” said VI coach Jaclyn Dickens, who is in her sixth season leading the Cobras after two years as an assistant.

To put things in proper perspective, the just-ended run of seven straight victories matched or bettered VI’s overall season win total in three of the past six years and fell just one short of tying the eight wins of another recent rough campaign.

It may not have been 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, but forgive the VI players if the water fountains at the Cobra Den suddenly seem to be spilling out milk and honey.

“Now you’re going out in public and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, VI’s doing great. Who do you all play next? When’s your next game?’ ” said senior Ashley Grimm, a former Virginia High standout and one of two remaining players along with reserve guard Kendra Haskins to have suffered through the rock-bottom lows of 6-25 and 4-26 seasons in 2008-09 and 2009-10, respectively, when recruiting efforts were crippled by the school’s dire financial straits, since on the mend.

“It’s a great feeling to know that we have a team this year that actually cares about winning and that’s actually willing to come to practice and work hard to get those wins.”

In it to win it

It sounds like a lame slogan you’d find slapped on a bulletin board at an elementary school, but for the Cobras it’s been a cliché that has given them their new-found cachet.

At VI, attitude really is everything.

“It’s very hard to turn someone who doesn’t care into a winner,” said T.T. Webb, VI’s leading scorer and a recent national player of the week honoree.

“This is a team full of fighters. We fight for what we want. We fight to be respected.”

Dickens said she’s never coached a more determined team.

“They just want it,” she said. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

VI’s last winning season came back in 2004-05 when the Cobras finished 18-11 with a 15-7 mark in the AAC, good enough for third place in a league that then featured 12 teams.

The Cobras’ 2004-05 season ended in the AAC tournament semifinals – a spot VI, which last qualified for the national tournament in 1999, hasn’t made it back to since.

In the past six years, the Cobras have finished no higher than seventh in the AAC and their only two league tournament victories came in play-in games before they were bounced in the quarterfinals.

The long-awaited turnaround appeared to be taking place last season when VI went on a three-game conference winning streak to sit at 10-12, 3-3 in mid-January. But the 2010-11 Cobras collapsed, failing to win again as they ended the year on a nine-game skid.

Grimm said a key difference this season is the cohesiveness of the team.

“We get along, we laugh, we cut-up,” she said. “It’s just a great atmosphere to be in. There’s not a dull moment. We’re always doing something. We’re singing, dancing, talking, random stuff. It’s just a great thing to be around and then when we’re winning it’s even better.”

“I feel like this year’s team is closer,” Webb added. “Instead of that’s my teammate, it’s more like that’s my sister.”

During a photo shoot Monday afternoon, the gritty bunch could have been mistaken for the latest cast of characters on “America’s Next Top Model,” gleefully cycling through a variety of poses as if Tyra Banks herself would be judging their passion and pizzazz.

“The chemistry,” Dickens said, “is huge.”

Weaving a winning Webb

It could be Too Terrific.

Or maybe Tremendously Talented.

Truly Terrifying – for the opposition – could work as well.

So what do those two “T’s” really stand for in front of the last name of the VI standout?

“When I started playing basketball [in seventh grade at Pulaski County (Va.) Middle School], they couldn’t say ‘Teonika,’ ” Webb said, referring to her given name. “The announcer just one day said, ‘I’m going to call you T.T.’ It’s kind of stuck with me since. There’s not another ‘T’ in my name.”

In other words, go ahead and plug in whatever “T” superlatives you want – but at VI for the past two seasons, T.T. has meant victory.

After starring for Pulaski County High School, Webb began her college career at the NCAA Division I level, suiting up for North Carolina’s Gardner-Webb University as a freshman and sophomore.

Webb was no bench-warmer either, appearing in 42 games and even getting four starts in her two years as a Bulldog despite twice seeing her season end with a torn ACL in her right knee.

But shaken by her injuries and looking to return closer to home, Webb went looking for a change of scenery and discovered VI – much to Dickens’ delight.

“I just kind of got lucky with her,” Dickens said. “I didn’t really work too hard. She just kind of fell in my lap – and we’ll take her.”

For her part, Webb said VI’s four-win season the year she was being recruited actually made the school even more appealing.

“I just feel like any team can be turned around basically,” she said. “It’s something I feel like I wanted to do. I wanted to be a star at a school I guess.”

Webb has been a supernova for the Cobras, scoring 13.8 points per game last year as a junior and this season leading VI with an average of 18.4 ppg, while also contributing 5.4 rebounds and 2.2 steals per game, not to mention a team-high 20 blocks on the season.

More than anything, however, Webb has given the Cobras a swagger built on the knowledge that the hardest workers often wind up winners.

“I was horrible,” Webb recalled about her seventh-grade season. “I was one of the worst people I think I’ve ever seen play basketball in my life. I was throwing the ball like I was playing softball – couldn’t shoot, couldn’t do nothing. I was just fast.

“I worked from that day forward. I was in the gym every day.”

Grimm said the addition of Webb transformed the team.

“She’s just that all-around ballplayer – and she does her job well,” she said.

The big finish

As much success as the Cobras have already experienced in their first 26 games – especially in light of their previous struggles – the crux of the season is only now dawning.

VI heads to league-leader and traditional power Tennessee Wesleyan on Wednesday, takes on last-place Point on Saturday and then closes the regular season next week with games against Bluefield and Montreat – the two teams tied with the Cobras for second place in the AAC.

Tennessee Wesleyan stomped VI in Bristol last month, but Point, Bluefield and Montreat all fell to the Cobras during their seven-game winning streak.

In addition to chasing a 20-win season and a conference title, the Cobras will be at minimum trying to hold onto a top-four seed to guarantee a home game in the quarterfinals of the AAC tournament.

“I think I’ll still look at it as a success, but I’ll be disappointed if we don’t finish like we should with those last four games and I think [the team] would be as well,” Dickens said.

“Now that we’ve gotten to this place, we want to win it all. But, yeah, just one step at a time. Our goal is to get better every year and to win more games every year so this year has been successful so far.”

Webb said the position the Cobras have put themselves in with their strong play should make them even more motivated to chase the once-unthinkable goals of an AAC title and a national tournament berth.

“Next year, they may not get this opportunity and right now we’re closer than close,” she said. “I feel like everybody should close their hand and just take it. It’s sitting in our hands, now we’ve just got to close them and take it.”

But coming from woe, the Cobras’ season is already worthy of wow.

“There is a lot of work left to do, but there’s a beginning to everything,” Grimm said. “If this year’s team is the team that gets us started to win for the next year then they deserve it.

“I can’t say I’m not going to be selfish about it – I’d like to win first. But I can’t be selfish about it because since we’ve had such losing seasons in the past, this season could be the turnaround, the turning point. I would take a lot of pride in being able to say I was part of that team that helped turn the program around.”

nhubbard@bristolnews.com | Twitter: @Hubbard_BHCSprt | (276) 645-2543