This year the boys basketball team is coming off a good season with an unfortunate ending,  a first round playoff loss to 14-13 Hanover Park, a team they had beat earlier in the season. 

Last year’s leading scorer Corey Rust sumed up last season by saying “ It definitely wasn’t the way we expected the season to go with a 15-11 record, I mean we started off strong but then kinda fell off towards the end.”

The team ended up losing two valuable seniors, Luke Ondrejko and Matt Smith, who helped the team win big games. Luckily, last year the team only had 6 seniors and was comprised mostly of juniors, who are now the incoming seniors, so the team will not be drastically affected by this loss.

Rust said: “ I think we have to fill out their shoes especially with the two seniors that helped us and we definitely got to help the underclassmen and make them feel comfortable.”

Rust’s expectations are high: “I think one of the biggest expectations is winning the conference and then since we lost the first round last year, I think Coach will be prioritizing defense most importantly and he will help us come together as a team and win important games.”

Coach Cattano said: “My expectations are that we play at a very high level and we practice and improve every single day.”

He emphasized the benefit of returning players: “Well, we have a lot of experienced players coming back from last year’s team that got a lot of playing time. And we are looking for some help from our juniors and our current sophomores who had an outstanding freshman season and were hoping that carries over and possibly some of those players can help us out as well.”

Cattano acknowledged that the team has a hard schedule and that the preparation in the offseason will help.

“We’ve done a lot of things in the offseason by going to Albright, which we normally do with our players.  We had about 6 weeks of morning workouts and this past fall we had the weight room open most of the week, so those who weren’t involved in a fall sport could bond a little bit and improve their strength,” he said.

Junior James Miller appreciated the preparation: “The weight room was really great for the fall season and helped the underclass men get a bond with the team and coach. This year expectations are high and the coaches are bringing the heat for the season and are pumped for it to start.”

This season will start on December 14th, at home against Roselle Park.