For everything that Greenwood girls basketball Coach Clay Reeves has done right over his two-decade run at the school, even he had to consult with one of his upperclassmen about what he thought best suited his team following a midseason road loss.
The Lady Bulldogs had reeled off seven consecutive victories until Mountain Home laced them with a 55-46 defeat Jan. 19. That setback put Greenwood in second place in the 5A-West Conference standings, a spot the Lady Bulldogs have rarely been in during their three-year stay atop Class 5A. That defeat also ended their 46-game conference winning streak.
Reeves mentioned that he spoke with one of his Lady Bulldogs and asked her whether the team's current style of play was working.
"I just said, 'Are we tired?' " he said. "It just didn't seem like we were moving enough. I asked her, 'Were they tired? Were they not in shape?' Honestly, we just didn't look like ourselves in that game."
The response he got surprised him. But considering who it came from, it made sense.
"Anna [Trusty] said, 'I think we can play faster,' " Reeves said. "She was like, 'If we practice faster and play faster, I think we'd be in even better shape.' Of course, that's not what I was thinking because I felt like I'd been working them too hard, and she said the exact opposite."
That "play fast" solution was par for the course for Trusty, who seemingly had an answer for everything opponents threw her way during the season, too. Her intelligence, though, is only part of the reason why she's the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps Player of the Year.
The way she played and the impact she had on this particular Greenwood team were immeasurable.
The 6-footer averaged 19.9 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game for the Lady Bulldogs, who went 28-4 and stomped their way to a fourth state championship in the past five years when they beat Vilonia 77-51 in the final. Greenwood defeated all but two teams it faced -- it later gained revenge against two of the programs it had previously lost to -- but the Lady Bulldogs' dominance actually can be split into two separate portions of the season.
Fourteen of the team's first 18 games were against in-state schools that reached the postseason. Of that bunch, five ended up being semifinalists and three were finalists.
The Lady Bulldogs were 14-4 over that stretch, but it was their nine-point loss at Mountain Home that transformed Greenwood into a nearly unbeatable force.
"We were all super, super upset after that game," Trusty said. "We watched a lot of film afterwards, and [Reeves] kind of brought it up, and he was like this just isn't what we normally do in terms of how we looked. Over the past few years, we've been like pushing the ball a lot, and it was evident in that game, and in some of the games before that, that we weren't pushing it, weren't playing fast.
"And so from then on, we knew we had to fix that if we wanted to win. We started practicing harder, playing so much faster. Izzy [Smith] stepped into that point guard role full time for us and really got us going when we decided to play that way."
That style suited Greenwood just fine as it didn't lose another game. The Lady Bulldogs won their final 14 games by an average of 37.2 points, with their closest encounter being a 64-57 win over Lake Hamilton in the semifinals. Among those victories was an 80-55 dismantling of Mountain Home as well.
But while Greenwood cranked up the tempo with which it played, it was Trusty who served as the catalyst on the majority of those nights.
"Pretty much all through her career, you can pretty much count on her for 18 to 20 points and six or seven rebounds," Reeves said of Trusty. "That's pretty well what her averages were her 10th-, 11th- and 12th-grade years. That's just dedication and hard work. She played a lot of travel ball with Ruben Diaz and the Oklahoma Shock, but she worked a lot on her own, too.
"She just has that competitive desire to want to be really good and help her team be successful. So she always found a way to get it done. And this year, she was the one that every team wanted to try to slow down."
The success rate for that strategy wasn't very high, considering the numbers she regularly put up against some of the state's best teams.
"For me, scoring has always been a big part of my game, but this year, I knew I'd have to do a little more because we lost some key pieces from the year before," said Trusty, who was named the state's Gatorade Girls Player of the Year last week. "I knew there was a little more pressure for me to score the ball. Then also defensively and rebounding, we had to replace Mady [Cartwright] and Adriana [Rusin]. ... They both did that very well for us last year. So I felt like that was something else I needed to step up and do."
She did that and more for Greenwood. Trusty eventually became the school's all-time leading scorer when she scored 31 points in a near triple-double in the regular-season finale, and she later polished off her time in a Lady Bulldog uniform when she collected 18 points, 7 rebounds and 3 assists en route to earning most valuable player honors in the championship game.
"I don't think there's a better high school program out there than Greenwood," Trusty said. "We've always been blessed with the best coaches and great players, and they push you to work hard every day. That's not going to change at all. I'm just so grateful to have been a part of it."
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NoneTrusty at a glance
SCHOOL Greenwood
CLASS Senior
POSITION Guard/forward
HEIGHT 6-0
NOTEWORTHY Scored 1,953 points in her career at Greenwood, which is the third-most in Class 6A or 5A. … Led the 5A-West in scoring as a sophomore and senior. … Was the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps Girls Underclassman of the Year in 2022. … Named all state in three of her four high school seasons.