By Greg Gielczyk
WEST BRANCH – After losing in the regional finals to Glen Lake last year, the Whittmore-Prescott boys basketball team also graduated four of its seven players and face some retooling this season with a new coach at the helm.
Currently, the Cardinals are at nine on the varsity in Blaise LaPrad’s first season as the head coach, replacing Jeff Miller. It’s still a little bit lower than LaPrad would like it to be, the odd numbers making it difficult to get a lot accomplished at practice.
Scrimmaging is nearly impossible, because the Cardinals can’t go five-on-five and get a true feel of game simulation.
“If we want to run evens, than I have to lace them up and I’ve got to play,” LaPrad said. “It’s okay. Like, I can still run with them. But, as far as coaching goes, it hinders how you can see the game.
“From what I know, we’ve got at least two starters returning from last year. I’ve got a senior in Tanner Harrison, who is about 6-foot-2 and lanky. A good player to have. Dana Thorson is probably around 6-2 and another lanky player. They’re both good athletes, good shooters. We’re just hoping to build around those pieces.”
Harrison was the starting quarterback for the football team, and is in excellent physical condition coming into the winter season. Playing quarterback also necessarily entails making good, sound decisions.
Whittemore-Prescott also has two other seniors on the roster, including Michael Blust who LaPrad says is a big, strong kid who is probably going to be a “banger” down low. The other senior on the roster is Tyler Hostetler, another football player.
“I’ve got a team that probably has seven or eight guards, compared to two post players. We’re going to space the floor out and play as fast as we can, knowing that we only have nine kids.
“We have a few scrimmages here before the season starts where we can try to do a good job of gauging where we’re at, as far as how handsy we are. My experiences playing and coaching at Ludington, it’s a lot of playing to the whistle, and it’s physical.”
LaPrad isn’t going to tell the Cardinals to give up plays on defense, but says he has to be mindful that being too aggressive on defense can hurt them since they don’t have a lot of depth.
He admits he’s going to have to perform a somewhat delicate balancing act to keep everyone in the game, and still play lock down defense.
In addition to Thorson, the juniors on the team are Kyle Hotas, Dominick Hensley and Logan Ludwig. There is also sophomore Aaron Mervyn and freshman Alex Kendra rounding things out.
Although from his experience playing and coaching LaPrad knows man-to-man defense best, and would like to run it with the Cardinals, he also recognizes that the number lows may force him to go more with zone defenses.
“I think we have the players to be a good man-to-man team,” LaPrad said. “To be a good man-to-man team it’s not just about guarding the ball. It’s about making sure that you are in good help position, that you’re not getting distracted by guys out on the perimeter, but you’re protecting the paint first.
“That’s probably our biggest challenge right now, is just making sure that we’re staying home and we’re not getting lost defensively. I think the only way we’re going way to really be able to identify that is to scrimmage.”
Finding the right combinations that click out on the court will also be key.
“Last year they had some pretty good seniors in that group,” LaPrad said. “Whenever you have seven players on the team and you win district, and push Glen Lake in the regionals, that took a good core of kids.
“They all understood their role, they all understood their purpose. I think that’s what we’re still trying to build. We’re just trying to identify kids who are going to be our best defenders.
“Because regardless if you can score, if you can play good, man-to-man defense you’re going to play. Because that’s kind of at a premium. We have expectations of where we want to be as a program. We have to be prepared to meet our goals.”
