When the Hampton-Dumont-CAL boys basketball team begins preseason practices next week, it’ll have a new head coach. After previously serving at the middle school level and as a high school assistant, Matt Lokenvitz is taking over the program. He says he wants to instill a new level of energy after last year’s team won four games.
“It’s not a lot of fun when you only win four games, and a lot of those games you’re down by 20 in the first half so you’re not really into the game,” Lokenvitz says. “And it’s tough to come to practice every day, it’s tough to go to games every day when things like that are happening. So I’m hoping to bring back a little bit more fun, help them learn the game a little bit, some of those types of things, but nobody’s expecting us to come in and all of sudden be state champs and do those types of things even though we’ve got some really good potential here with the guys returning to win a lot more games. Let’s bring back some fun. Let’s teach the game of basketball a little bit and how that can relate to things that are going on in the real world too.”
They’ll start with a quality foundation, having graduated just one starter from last year. Brady Harr is back at center after averaging 17.5 points and 13.1 rebounds per game last year. At forward, Caden Woods contributed nearly 10 points per game, followed by Tramaine Horton at 7.9. Lokenvitz says they’ll make some changes to the scheme.
“This year is going to be a little bit more up tempo. We’re going to run multiple different defenses. We’ve got, I think, some depth. We’re pretty much returning everybody, minus Connor Miller from last year. So we should have some depth in our lineup to allow us to be able to run a little bit, and then instituting a little bit of some secondary offense and some more motion principles and whatnot. So it’s more fluid. It’s not so much of a rigid set play all the time. Oftentimes when you run a set play, if you don’t get the first shot out of the set play, your kids kind of don’t know what to do next, and where to go next and what to do. So we’re going to hopefully institute some more of a fluid offense with some motion and some different things that way.”
They’ll begin the season Tuesday, December 2 by hosting Nevada.
Matt Lokenvitz interview:
