The start of basketball season is months away, but at least one local team is already hard at work preparing for its upcoming campaign.

Georgiana School recently completed a slate of games against teams from across the state during its summer season.

According to head coach Kirk Norris, the Panthers posted a 12-2 record against some very competitive teams, including Class 4A Fairview High School, which advanced to the state tournament last season.

“Your record during the summer doesn’t mean much, but I was pleased with the way we played,” Norris said. “We competed, and I felt like we played some good teams and held our own.”

Norris praised the play of several of his returning players, including sophomore Richard Boggan.

“Richard has had a great summer,” Norris said. “In one game he had 26 points and 12 rebounds, and he faced off against several guys that were 6-foot-6 or so, and he’s only 6-foot tall and he held his own and played very well.”

Norris said the games allowed his team to continue to build on the experience it gained last year.

“We have some guys coming back that played a lot of minutes for us last year when we were a pretty young team,” he said. “These games were a chance for them to get some more experience before we start playing games that count.”

The games also provided Norris an opportunity to tweak his team’s schemes on the offensive and defensive ends of the court.

“It’s a chance to try some different things,” he said.

“We ran some different offenses and defenses to see how they’d work for us, and some things worked better than others. The biggest thing is that it gave us a chance to experiment before the games start counting for real.”