Q and A: Boys basketball coach will rely on experience of Bassett, Beenken, Varner

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Guards Austin Bassett and Darren Beenken are back from last year’s otherwise senior-heavy team. What are you looking for from those two players this year?

Those two along with Varner are the only guys with any real varsity game experience so we need those guys to accept on court leadership roles.

Who are some other guards that could be ready to make a varsity impact?

We have some depth at guard this year, but it’s very young depth. We will be asking a lot of young guys to develop and mature quickly this season which isn’t easy to do. We are looking for Alex Chadwick and Johnny Dittman to make an impact early while some other guys are developing at the JV level.

You lose scoring and an inside presence in all-conference player Alex Michaels. What players are competing for varsity time at the forward and center spots?

We return sophomore Nick Varner who gained some much-need minutes last year at center and we expect a big year from him. We then have several other guys competeing for time at the forward and center spots.

After a week of practice, what do you see as the overall strengths and weaknesses of this year’s roster? Do you have enough size to play a half-court game or will you play even more of an up-and-down, fast style this season?

We don’t have a lot of size again, but we do have some athletes. We also like to play an up-tempo game and that will be amped up this year.

The team has lost quite a few close games the last couple seasons. What does the team do in practice to try to improve in that area?

That just comes with experience and confidence. Our kids have fought hard to be in position to win some games that people thought we couldn't but we need to have the confidence to finish people. The last couple years we've had many games where we struggled down the stretch shooting from the floor and especially the free throw line to finish the game. I hope these kids have the confidence to get past that.

What are your goals for the team this season? What does the team have to do well or improve upon to achieve these goals?

We will be extremely young, so my main goal for these guys are to improve as the season goes on. It sounds simple but these young guys need the experience and the reps to learn and get better and hopefully by the end of the year they’re comfortable. If that happens, I believe we have enough talent to be sleeper at playoff time.

Tags: boys basketball, sports, farmington, tigers, prep