It’s only the beginning of the season, but the L.V. Rogers senior boys basketball team seem to be on their way to a good campaign.
“If some of the games we’ve played are any indication, if we can continue to get better over the season it’s going to be a successful year for sure,” said Bombers coach Ross Naka.
So far the team has only played five games, but among those was a win this past weekend against a highly ranked Oliver AA team.
“For a senior team we’ve got nine Grade 11’s and one Grade 10, we are really young so to get that win was very good for us,” said Naka.
“That Oliver basketball team is one of the better AA teams in BC, so for us to have beaten them just shows what we’re capable of.”
Now in his sixth year coaching basketball, Naka said for a young team there is a lot of skill and talent.
“The amount of time that they put in on their own is a great strength of our team. We practice twice a week, but it’s invaluable to have the guys go in and play on their own… they do that a lot,” he said.
“The other thing that’s good about these guys — and more so than past years — is that they’re just a tight group of guys… we’ve got 12 guys and they all get along real well — and it shows on the floor.”
Naka said this team is a lot deeper than usual with big contributions coming from several players.
“When we played Oliver I think we had three of four guys put in 12 to 15 points each and that’s going to be a lot more of a strength than one guy who can dump 30 [points] in by himself,” said Naka, adding that having five to seven players that are able to score around 15 points on any given night is another strength of the team.
“Heading forward I think it’s going to be a mental thing more than anything… as much as we need to improve skill-wise, we need to improve mentally to be able to perform in that level no matter who we play against.”
The Bombers easily took down Grand Forks on Monday night at home by a lopsided 75-30 count. The senior girls club also triumphed against their Boundary visitors by a score 53-36.
The Bombers head to Penticton Friday to play at the Pen High Christmas Classic.