Deeper, more athletic Puxico hoop squad making strides this summer

BLOOMFIELD – First-year Bloomfield High School varsity boy’s basketball coach Ben Sindle hasn’t been on the job long, but he has seen enough of his rival at Puxico High School to know how he wants to emulate the Indian program.

“The kids at Puxico are blowing up their coach’s phone, saying ‘We want to get in the gym,’” Sindle said recently after scrimmaging against Puxico. “We have to be like that.”

The Indians have some serious momentum going right now after winning 30 games in two seasons under coach Bryant Fernetti, as compared to just 33 wins over the previous four seasons combined.

“We’ve had a really good summer,” Fernetti said after handling Bloomfield in a 30-minute scrimmage recently. “We’ve played 39 games and the families have done a really good job, the parents and the kids, of helping each other make the games.

“We can play a lot right now because we have a lot of really good kids that show up to play.”

With a large group of athletes competing all summer, the Indians have developed a deep program, which Fernetti plans on utilizing to his advantage this winter.

“We will be deeper,” Fernetti said of this coming season. “Overall, we will be a little more athletic.”

That is bad news for the Puxico opponents.

The Indians made significant strides defensively from two years ago to last season. Fernetti’s team lowered its defensive average to under 57 points per game, which was the best number since 2008.

“I plan on going 10 or 11 deep,” Fernetti said of his rotation, “and keeping the pace (of play) up as much as we can.”

Fernetti discovered early on that the Indian players, some of whom had endured three consecutive losing seasons prior to his arrival, had the right attitude for success.

“What helps us,” Fernetti said, “is that a lot of our kids are very unselfish. They just want to see us win instead of worrying about points or playing time.

“They just want to win, and they have done a really good job.”

Puxico made strides defensively a year ago, and Fernetti sees that evolution continuing this winter.

“We have worked on being more versatile on defense,” Fernetti said of this summer’s focus. “We have worked on a lot more man-to-man (defense). In the past, we have been primarily a zone (defensive) team, but with the team that we have, that is athletic and deep, we can go man a lot more.

“Our goal will be to apply pressure, whether it is man or zone or full court because we are so deep.”

Puxico graduated just three seniors (Cole Barnfield, Duncan Crabb, and Eric Riddle), and has 23 student-athletes returning for this season.

“You can tell the improvement we made,” Fernetti said following last season. “We have such big numbers coming up that I think that we will continue to do that.

“It just really makes my job easy. The effort, the dedication from all of the kids has been tremendous.”