Boys varsity basketball officially began its season at MHS with a 51-36 victory on Nov. 30 in a non-conference game against an away game at Woodside High School, according to the maxpreps website. This year’s team has five to six players who can score exceptionally well and have the potential to have big games, coach Champ Wrencher said.
“My goal is very short-term, just to be in good physical condition and practice right on the nose to be prepared for each game,” Wrencher said.
Focusing on executing the fundamentals correctly every day will in turn allow bigger goals to fall in place, he said.
“Conditioning, and figuring out how to execute the game plan –those are things that we can accomplish every day, especially when you have the right people,” Wrencher said. “This group practices incredibly hard, and I almost have to save them from themselves,” Wrencher said.
Being careful about what activities are done during the practice and the length for which they are done is important to deal with this, Wrencher added.
“My method is to figure out what type of talent there is, and if there are a lot of fast players, is to implement something that takes advantage of that,” Wrencher said. “Some years, we have a lot of tall players. So you have to institute a plan to take advantage of your height. And so it varies from year to year, depending on the talent,” he said.
This year, the team has a variety of talents amongst its players, so figuring out the right mix is important before every game, Wrencher said.
The group plays quite well considering they are new, senior team captain and point guard Jacob Oldham said.
“I don’t really care about how many points I score, like my personal stats, but I just want to win and lead this team to win,” Oldham said.
There is still much room for improvement, but the team is currently on an upward trend, Oldam said.
“I think the group has a lot of potential,” senior team captain and shooting guard Landon Nguyen said.“We’re very young and play sort of excited and aggressive. We do have to be more polished,” he added.
The group itself has not played together very much until this season, so building team chemistry to be more cohesive is important, Nguyen said.
Some of the team’s goals are winning leagues and playing to the best of their ability at playoffs, Oldham said.
“There’s some things that this team can make happen,” Wrencher said. “And they don’t need an offense. They don’t need a play. They can just kind of make things happen on their own with their natural athletic ability,” he said.
“This is the most dedicated group that I’ve had,” Wrencher said. “We have a good collection of people who are used to winning, and it’s going to be exciting to see how it plays out.”