March 26, 2014 at 3:08 p.m.
RBA eighth graders preparing for state tournament
RBA eighth graders preparing for state tournament
Youth teams from all over Wisconsin will take part in the tournament and the Rhinelander squad is ready and eager to show its stuff.
Varsity coach Derek Lemmens was on hand, helping in any way he could to prepare the eighth graders for their biggest tournament of the year. Head coach Shaun Smith said his team prides itself on its ability to make stops.
"Definitely our main focus has to be defense," he said. "I think at our last tournament, we played our best defense of the year, so I'm confident in our man-to-man defense and I think that our zone defenses that we run will be a good change of pace for a few minutes here and there."
Smith also said he has plenty of confidence in his guys. The tournament schedule is a grueling one, so he's happy his squad is so deep.
"The nice thing about our team is that we're pretty balanced," he said. "I have confidence in playing all 10 kids, and I think our bench is going to have to be huge in the tournament, playing four games on Saturday and possibly another four on Sunday. Everyone is going to have to step up, honestly."
That means his guys will have to play to their roles. The group will lean on a few of their standouts for points, as they've done all year.
"Our scoring leaders are Owen White, Logan Freund and Brad Quade, and we're going to need them to do much of the same for us, with guys like Markus Johnson and Brad Comer coming in and knocking down big shots when we need them to," Smith said.
After finishing seventh out of 32 teams at January's Great Northwest Basketball League Championship Tournament (GNBL), the Hodags have been competing in "A" caliber tournaments. Since then, the team has won three tournaments and compiled a 17-3 record in GNBL tournament play.
Smith said the competition at the state tournament will take things to an entirely new level.
"The competition is going to be the best competition we've played all year," he said. "The unfortunate thing is we've seen very little of the competition and how they play. We're not real familiar with them. I've heard a few things about a couple of the teams that we'll play, but for the most part, we don't know them very well."
The Hodags will face Shawano, Slinger and Waterford in pool play Saturday. If they place in the top two in their pool, they will advance to the Round of 16 Saturday night. The tournament will continue Sunday with the placement rounds.
Johnson, one of the team's guards, said while they don't have the scouting reports they'd like, he's confident they're ready for the challenge.
"We've been preparing hard throughout the season, but this is really exciting because we've been working really hard ever since fourth or fifth grade for a lot of us, so it feels really good to go to the state tournament and play," he said. "We want to do as well as we can as a team and try to play as well as we did at the league championship tournament this year."
Freund said he thinks his team has what it takes to advance in the tournament.
"We just want to play our games and have fun," he said. "We can make it quite a few games into the second day, and hopefully we can go even farther. Our defense is really good. We run a great 1-3-1 zone and a great man defense. We just need to work on playing better as a team and we'll go far."
Lemmens' presence indicates how seriously the RBA is taking its youth programs. Smith said it's incredibly important for a successful varsity program.
"I think (a good youth program) is the key and I've been fortunate in that these guys were coached by Paul Johnson in fifth, sixth and seventh grade," he said. "He taught them the proper way to play defense and offense, so when I took over the team this year, I didn't have to focus on that. It's very important that when they get to the high school level, all that has been established."
High school is still off in the future though. This team is focusing in the here and now, and that is playing Rhinelander basketball at the state tournament.
"Our goal is to go down and win as many games as possible," Smith said. "Like any Hodag team that plays, we expect to go out there and play as hard as we can on defense, as smart as we can on offense and take care of the ball."
Andy Hildebrand may be reached at [email protected].
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