How will Butler County area boys hoops teams replace production? ‘We’re going to find buckets somewhere’
As the shoes begin to squeak, they’ll need to be filled, too.
Maybe even by more than one player.
Nine of the 11 boys basketball teams in the Butler County area graduated their top scorer from a year ago. In some cases, those squads lost a 1,000-point scorer (Braylon Littlejohn, Butler; Taite Beighley, Karns City; Ryan Ceh, Mars) and in another, one team lost its all-time leading point-producer (Max Hurray, North Catholic).
How do you replace a guy like that?
“So much of it depends on the culture of your program and what you do,” North Catholic coach Jim Rocco said. “If you’re a program that’s running a ton of set plays for one specific kid ... it can be tough trying to find buckets. We don’t do that. With how we play, those points find somebody.
“We’re going to find buckets somewhere. We have to. It just sort of works itself out.”
Coach Mike Jewart’s Moniteau roster lacks experience. The answer to the task isn’t so simply put for them. He had another word for it.
“Daunting,” Jewart said. “When you lose your leading scorer, you’re looking to see who’s the next guy that can take that role. You look at a couple of different things. Sometimes you need to replace (them) by one or maybe you don’t have quite that scoring ability in one individual and you may need to look to replace that with two. It’s always something that you’re trying to figure out. Where are the points going to come from? That’s what we’re looking at very much so here this year.”
Jewart anticipates his offense running through guard Connor Ealy — the team’s lone senior — and junior swingman Brendin Sankey.
Freeport has a similar situation to Moniteau’s as it doesn’t return a quartet of major scorers.
“When you lose a senior that you essentially get the ball to and get a good shot off any time in Brady Sullivan, yes, it hurts,” Yellowjackets coach Rich Macura said. “We’ll probably be really concentrating on sharing the ball more and getting points out of our defense this year.
“Until someone develops into that leadership role as a scorer, we’ll play team ball.”
Union coach Logan Pistorius had the same thought.
“You’ve definitely got to look at your younger guys, asking them to step up,” Pistorius said. “But, I think that replacing those guys comes from being able to play good, fundamental basketball, remaining staunch on defense, and doing a lot of the little things. I think the scoring will kind of come with that.”
Whereas those teams are looking for one to step up, Butler coach Matt Clement feels he has a wealth of lesser-known guys who are ready to break out.
“I feel like I’ve got four guys I can go to,” Clement said. “I feel like I’ve got more guys this year that I can go to at the end of the game than I’ve ever had.”
A lot of that is because those players — Andrew Gettinger, Stainton Forbes, Ayden Andrews and Tayt Lucas — have showed scoring ability before.
“What I tried to establish was I got a lot of guys a lot of good minutes last year,” Clement said. “In certain games, they were some of the main guys. ... Getty had games where he had 14 points. Stainton had games where he had 14, 16 points. Tayt hit six 3s in some games. Ayden Andrews would come off the bench and score 10 or 12.
“They’ve all had that feel of doing it before. The hard part was I had so many guys last year, it was hard to get consistency for them. They all deserve a piece of the pie, but it was hard to iron out the piece of pie to get them all.”
A lot of times when a leading scorer goes, it’s not just the scoring impact he made that’s missed.
“He did so much in terms of loose balls and making big stops defensively,” Rocco said of Hurray.
“It’s always tough to lose a 1,000-point scorer,” Kepple said of Beighley. “Taite, on top of scoring really well for us, his basketball knowledge was through the roof. He was great in any situation. He was obviously a great passer. Not only did he score a lot, but he also contributed to a lot more than people realize.”
Editor’s note: This story was corrected at 1:30 p.m. Dec. 3 to correct the spelling of Union coach Logan Pistorius’ last name.
