Senior-laden team pumped for anonther run at district

The Saxony Lutheran boys basketball team will return six of its top eight players from last year's squad, which went 22-4 before losing the district semifinal to Puxico.

"Since we have six of our top eight guys back, we'll be able to pick up where we left off," coach John Daniel said. "I would like to think with six key players back, we can be a competitive Class 2 team. I like to think we can compete with anybody in our district."

The six returning players are Max Wieser, Garrett Ruppel, Zach Bohnert, Ben Courtois, Austin Kwikkel and Bret Steffens.

Daniel would not comment on which of these six he would rely on most for his scoring. He also would not comment on what position each player would fill.

"I would just say in general we had a well-balanced scoring attack last year, and I expect us to have a well-balanced attack this year," he said. "We've got several kids who can post up and several kids who can hit the outside shot. I think we're going to be very well-balanced."

Daniel thinks Advance and Puxico will be the two teams to beat in his district.

"We like to think we can compete with them on any given night, but we have to prove that," Daniel said. "We have reasonable height and athleticism for a Class 2 team. Some guys are long and lanky, which is a nice build to have for basketball."

Daniel added that in some of the games his team lost last year to tough opponents, such as Notre Dame and Scott County, it failed to be as conditioned as it should have been. He said getting his team in better shape to be successful late in games has been an important part of practice so far.

"Throughout the practice we just try to pick up the intensity in all of our drills and try to do some running early in practice so the kids are tired throughout practice, and try to execute throughout practice when they are already tired," Daniel said.