R.F. Staples’ senior boys basketball team is off to a good start this season, having won eight of nine games as the team headed into the weekend tournament in Lac La Biche.
The team won the Whitecourt tournament Dec. 16-17, which pitted it against a handful of its zone competitors.
“It gives (the team) a lot of confidence basically that they have the opportunity to beat every team they play,” said coach Jon Hutchison.
The T-Birds had significant leads against both Barrhead and Whitecourt in the tournament, but a series of fouls narrowed the gap.
The team led Barrhead by 16 points but only beat them by three, while a 25-point advantage over Whitecourt dwindled to a mere two points at the final buzzer.
“We get in a lot of foul trouble so that’s pretty much why the leads have been diminishing. We just have to buckle down on defence and move our feet more and not reach in so much,” he said, adding this will be a focus in practice. “Finishing our games is really hard right now, but that comes with age too.”
Hutchison said the team is young this year, with a majority of the players in Grade 10 and only three Grade 12 players. Despite this, he has high hopes.
“I’ve been coaching for six or seven years now and this is the strongest team I’ve had,” he said. “We have every player over 6 feet except for one — we’re really tall this year which really helps in basketball.”
In particular, he said Grade 12 student Brendan Jensen will help lead the club.
“He’s been averaging around 20-25 points a game and 10 rebounds a game, so he’s very consistent,” he said, adding this is Jensen’s third year on the senior squad.
“We’re very strong, but we have to earn everything,” he said. “In every game, I always tell the kids, you always have a chance to win against any team any day. You just have to want it more than the other team.”
The T-Birds obviously wanted it more than any other team in Whitecourt, he said, which helped them take the win at the coveted tournament, which helps rank them for the zone.
“We have a really good chance of winning the zone this year, but like every other year, I think we’re going to end up being around third,” he said.
Although this team is the strongest he has coached, there are two other clubs in the zone that will be tough competition, he said.
Both Morinville Composite High School and Spruce Grove’s St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic High School are well-coached with large talent pools, Hutchison said.
“I’m going to try to get a game coming up against them because in order to be ranked well in the zone, you need to play every team in the zone but a lot of the time, when you have 11 or 12 teams in the zone, it’s hard to get every one,” he said.
Before heading into the Whitecourt tourney, the team had a successful run in Evansburg on Dec. 2-3, landing in second place after three wins and a loss in the finals against Evansburg.
The team also played St. Mary School on Monday, Dec. 19 and won that game by 20 points.
Coming off a series of wins puts the club in a good position heading into the weekend tournament in Lac La Biche, Hutchison said.
