MAUPIN – Last season, it took seven games for the South Wasco County Redsides to win two games.
So far, SWC has already won one game in a pair of tournament contests and this up and coming group is aiming for more consistent play to climb higher and higher in the Big Sky Conference standings.
With the return of second-team all-league sophomore post Garrett Olson, juniors Tanner Davis, Marshall Bell and Bobby Kately, added to the extra punch from Ben Birman, Haiden Perez, Austin Munoz, Alex Stebbins and Oscar Thomas, there is a feeling that the Redsides could improve on their four-win 2017-2018 season.
“I think we can be a lot better than last year,” Birman said. “We have two freshmen that will help us out. We lost Brock (Lafaver) to injury, but we have Oscar Thomas. He can shoot threes pretty well and he can dribble. With Oscar and a couple of other guys, I think we can be a lot better. We are a little bit ahead of where we were at this point last year. We are still a younger team, but we are just going to gain experience as we go on.”
SWC finished 4-21 overall and finished seventh in the Big Sky Conference at 2-12.
The team scored 36.1 points a clip and allowed 57.0 in those 25 games.
While the Redsides lost 11 of their last 12 games, four were by seven points or less, three came by two points.
On offense, they scored 49 or more points five times and posted a 2-3 record.
They learned how to play a full 32 minutes and are currently working on fixing turnovers and finding a way to better utilize the 6-foot-3-inch Olson down on the blocks.
As a freshman, Olson averaged 19.8 pts per game, while shooting 50 percent from the field. He also pulled down 8.7 rebounds per game eclipsed a season-high 37 points twice in non-league tilts against Country Christian and Nixyaawii.
“I definitely think that we can be a district-playing team this year,” Olson said. “I am excited to play with the new people we have coming in and the people we have coming in from last year. I am confident in everyone we have here. We just need to stay focused and play disciplined basketball with not as many turnovers.”
Head coach Jim Hull went back to basics last year and for the first two games of this season.
The Redsides responded by winning their first game and are already scoring 10.4 more points a game (46.5).
“Expectations for me, especially with how well we played this weekend (John Howey Invitational), are probably raised a little bit,” Hull said. “But, we have a lot of work to get done and we still have a lot of youth on this team. That makes it really tough to compete with the teams that are pretty senior dominant like Sherman and Dufur. We feel that we can compete with them and we feel that if we can compete with them now, that is just setting us up for the future.”
Age aside, Davis is not going to use inexperience as an excuse. SWC took some lumps last year, but came back strong in football and have visions of continuing that momentum through basketball.
“I think age is just a number,” Davis said. “These guys are willing to play up and are ready to play up. I think we will play up to our potential this year. We will take a giant step. Coach Hull knows what he is doing. He has taken some incredible teams to districts in the past, so we need to really focus on what he is teaching us and really learn it to the best of our ability. If we do that, we can be pretty good.”
Following next Friday’s 7:30 p.m. road clash at Condon, SWC (1-1 overall) hosts Mitchell-Spray at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 17 for a league game.
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