Let the hoops begin: Basketball season starts this week
Teams begin new season with more questions than answers
Inside the spacious North Point High School gymnasium, site of the inaugural SMAC boys basketball coaches media day over Thanksgiving weekend, coaches and players who arrived admitted the outset of the season would provide more questions than answers enveloped by ample enthusiasm.
Not only were the 2019-2020 boys and girls basketball state semifinals and finals among the first casualties of the coronavirus pandemic, but the entire 2020-2021 winter sports season would later succumb. Without a season last winter, coaches and players from the roughly one dozen SMAC boys basketball teams that took part in the media day session admitted they were eager to start a season that would begin as a mystery.
“It’s going to be interesting,” said Thomas Stone boys basketball coach Dale Lamberth, now in his 22nd season at the helm of the Cougars’ program. “We’ll all in the same boat. Nobody had a season last year, so a lot of my guys and a lot of players on other teams have very little or no varsity experience. Teams are going to need time to really gel together.”
North Point boys basketball coach Jimmy Ball, whose 17th season at the helm of the Eagles’ program began with a 7362 victory over St. Charles on
Monday, mirrored Lamberth’s assertion that the outset of the season would be far from a finished product.
“A lot of my guys are going to be new to varsity,” Ball said. “I have a couple of seniors who got playing time two years ago, but my juniors and sophomores did not get to have a season a year ago. I think offenses are going to struggle early in the season. By the midway portion of the season I think teams will look better and by the end of the year everyone should be okay.”
Leonardtown coach Jeb Barber noted that he had 87 players at tryouts and eventually kept 14 on varsity and another 12 on junior varsity. But the Raiders’ sixthyear coach also noted that his varsity roster of three seniors, three juniors, four sophomores and two freshmen will have limited playing experience heading into the 2021-2022 slate.
“We had a good number of kids at tryouts and everyone we kept
BASKETBALL
is really excited about the season,” said Barber, whose team will host Patuxent this week in its season opener. “We just don’t have a lot of players with varsity experience, but neither does anyone else. Two of our returning starters from 2019-20, Nick Stearns and Sidney Roberson, played football for us in the fall.”
Leonardtown will later competed in a holiday tournament that will include fellow SMAC schools Calvert, Chopticon and Patuxent. All three of those squads will head into the 2021-2022 season with new coaches, technically, since none of them were able to have a season last winter.
“The best part about the first week of practices was just hearing the sounds of everyone in the gym,” said Calvert coach Tim Contee, whose squad will carry 14 on varsity and another 14 on junior varsity. “The basketball hitting the floor, the sneakers squeaking, the player and coaches talking. You could just feel the excitement building with each practice.”
“We had 70 kids at tryouts and we ended up keeping 14 on varsity and 15 on j. v.” said Chopticon coach Brad Lidig. “A lot of my guys have very little varsity experience. But they’re excited to be
able to have a season.”
Patuxent coach Jeremy Kurutz will take over for the Panthers after spending the previous decade at SMAC and county rival Calvert. While most of the coaches on hand at the media session spoke with modest trepidation about what the first month of the season might look like, Kurutz remained assured that the Panthers would be hitting the court running.
“We’ll going to be okay,” said Kurutz, whose team coincidentally opened the season on Wednesday by hosting Calvert. “I have really liked what I have seen from our guys in the practices so far. This group is very smart and they’re quick to learn. We’ve found a system that will work for us. We’ll be ready.”