Defense to fuel Wood River’s basketball hopes

Boys debut 20-game season Thursday in Hailey

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Enthusiasm and teamwork are two things that Wood River High School boys’ varsity basketball coach Jeff Larson has noticed in his first two weeks working with the 1999-2000 Wolverine edition.

"There’s a willingness to work hard and I’m happy to be part of it," said Larson, 29, a Seattle-area native who has succeeded Roger Quarles at the head of the Wood River basketball program.

Wood River opens its 20-game regular-season slate Thursday, Dec. 2 with non-conference games against the Glenns Ferry Pilots at the high school gym in Hailey. Sawtooth Central Idaho Conference action begins in mid-December.

Larson said, "To succeed in our tough league, we’ll have to improve from last year. We’ll need to play as five on the floor. We don’t have a superstar, so we’ll just have to play hard and be efficient.

"We’re not going to compare ourselves to other teams. We’ll try to buy into our philosophy, that is: Defense first, and decision-making on offense."

Defense is the aspect of basketball where hard work really shows up. Not surprisingly, the foundation of Wood River’s newest team will be built on defense—with the hope it will turn into points.

Larson, Wood River’s fifth head basketball coach this decade, said, "Our strength by far is our quickness.

"We’ll need to play aggressive defense and try to make it an up-tempo game. All the time, we’ll try to be sound fundamentally and avoid mistakes. And it all has to start with our team defense."

Last year’s 8-16 Wood River squad played defense well enough to win seven road games, the most a Wolverine boys’ team has won away from home since 1991.

Although Wood River averaged 50.1 points per game, won two district tournament games and captured the McCall Christmas tournament, the Wolverines struggled mightily on their homecourt, winning only once and averaging barely 45 ppg in Hailey.

To win at home, they’ll have to make the same shots that bounced off the mark last winter, rebound with intensity and make trips to the foul line.

"Rebounding isn’t all about height," said Larson. "It’s about boxing out. We’ve got to be able to help and recover."

Actually, Wood River made progress at the free throw line last year. The Wolverines shot 244-397 (61%), meaning they went to the line 140 more times and made 88 more charities than the previous year. But opposing teams still had the edge at the stripe, shooting 100 more times.

Four varsity players return.

They are 5-10 senior point guard and team captain James Cordes (7.7 ppg), 6-1 senior post Charlie Askew (3.4 ppg), 6-3 senior post Ryan Skinner (1.5 ppg) and 5-9 junior guard Sky Wolfe (7.8 ppg).

"We’ll definitely be looking at Sky to score and everybody knows that," said Larson.

The coach said, "We’ll run a motion offense. Since we can’t depend on perimeter shooting, we’ll try to spread and space the floor to use our quickness and speed. We’ll do a lot of bouncing off screens and rolling to the hoop.

"We’ll run some set plays if someone is feeling it, or if we find a mismatch out there. Basically we’ll try to take what the defense gives us.

"Our big problem last year was turnovers. So our big emphasis will be taking care of the ball. Decision-making will be a huge factor for us."

Cordes, an All-SCIC honorable mention selection last winter, will be the main playmaker and will run the fast break with Wolfe. A promising newcomer is 5-7 sophomore guard Vince Nagashima.

Giving Wood River some needed size inside are two seniors: 6-1 post Zack Hays and 6-2 post Blake Barney. Another junior, 6-0 post J.T. Phillips, is currently sidelined with an ankle injury.

The Wolverine JV is coached by Carey School graduate Lane Kirkland. He coached football at Oakley in 1998 and, like Larson, has brought youth and vigor to the Wood River job.

Several of the JV players will swing between JV and varsity. The juniors are 6-2 post John Reese, 6-1 guard Adam Marcroft, 5-9 guard Max Paisley and 5-9 guard Tyler Metzel.

The sophomores on JV are 6-0 post Derek Gilster, 6-2 post Matt Beck, 6-1 post Perry Elvy, 5-11 guard Cole Everman, 5-9 guard Tyler Stewart and 5-5 guard Cody Byington.

Student managers are Sarah McCarthy and Emily Leatham. The freshman boys’ coach is Steve Frickey.

Last Saturday Wood River took part in the Gooding Jamboree and showed solid defense along with promise on offense. The Wolverines opened with a 22-21 victory over Gooding and then fell 29-21 to the Twin Falls JV—after making up a 10-point deficit.

For the rest of the season, Wood River’s schedule has changed slightly compared to 1998-99.

Added are Canyon Conference A-3 schools Declo and Valley of Hazelton. Declo is expected to replace Wendell in the SCIC A-2 ranks next school year.

Middleton has been subtracted. And Wood River has only one game against Salmon.

When they take the court, the Wolverines will be trying to reverse a seven-season 46-105 losing tide that has swept over the program since the Wolverines went 42-29 in the three seasons from 1990-92.

The program’s last winning season was in 1992, and the last district tournament championship was 1991.