WOODLAND SHOOTS FOR ANOTHER STRONG SEASON

With three returning starters and five of its top eight players back, the Woodland boys basketball team hopes to put together another solid season.

The Cardinals were one of the area's better small-school squads last year, going 17-10 and playing well for most of the season.

"I was real happy with the way we played last year," said Woodland coach Jennings Wilkinson. "We lost those 10 games by a total of 39 points. We won a lot of close ones and lost a lot of close ones, but we played pretty well overall. We had a seven-game winning streak at one time."

Among the players Woodland lost to graduation is Shawn Massa, now playing basketball at East Central Junior College.

Starters returning for the Cardinals are 5-foot-11 junior David Massa, 5-11 senior Greg Lincoln and 6-2 senior Jason Bandermann. Massa and Lincoln both averaged about 12 points per game last year while Bandermann contributed about 11 points a contest.

Also returning after seeing action last season are 6-2 senior Nick Underwood, 5-9 senior Chris Lutes and 6-foot senior Corey Yount.

"We'll be counting on our returning players quite a bit for experience," Wilkinson said.

Others helping out will be 5-10 junior Jeff Rowe, 6-2 senior Josh Lemons, 5-9 senior Brandon Stinnett and 6-4 senior Jason Gill, the team's tallest player.

As for his outlook on the season, Wilkinson said, "At times I think we can be fairly competitive and at times I'm not sure. How good we are defensively will determine how good we are overall. They've been working fairly hard and we're just taking it day by day. We just try and improve a little bit each day in practice; that's our goal.

"This is a good bunch of guys. As long as they try their best and keep working hard to get better, I'll be happy."

The Cardinals will open their season next week when the annual Woodland Tournament is played.

"We're looking forward to the season," said Wilkinson. "The boys played a lot of ball this summer trying to get better. We're like everybody else at this time of the year; we're getting tired of practice and want to start playing games."