Graduation and transfers took a big toll on the Southeastern men’s basketball team but the Savage Storm will look to a host of youngsters, including a local pair, to make an immediate impact.
Coach Kelly Green’s youthladen troops begin the season Friday in Minnesota for a pair of games in the Annual GAC/ Northern Sun Challenge before their first home outing on Saturday, November 16.
The Savage Storm will look to replace 75 percent of their offensive production from a 23-9 squad, which finished near the top of the conference regular season standings for a third straight season.
Five double-figure scorers are gone from that club with juniors Landon Condiff and Chandler Dickinson returning after splitting starts most of the year. Condiff tallied 7.0 points an outing with Dickinson adding 5.5 per game.
That pair will be counted on to lead the way in continuing the Southeastern perimeter shooting prowess, including last year when they led the league with 889 three-point attempts in which they connected on a hair shy of 38 percent.
Robert Briley is back for his redshirt junior season and will move into a starting role as the team’s top returning scorer with 8.9 points and a team-best 5.6 rebounds per contest. Fellow junior Elijah Hughey will also be expected to fill a much bigger role as well after tallying 3.2 points a night.
“It’s been a little puzzling at times because this is a whole new team basically,” Green commented. “We have guys that return but didn’t see a lot of minutes. Robert, Landon and Chandler saw quality minutes down the stretch but that’s about it. We are still trying to figure out people’s roles and how we are going to play. In the past years, we’ve had guys in the program for two or three years and then just added a piece or two. There was always a core group, but we just don’t really have that this year. We lack stability because they were mainly role players a year ago.
“We want these guys to be the best they can and not go try to do things they can’t do. It’s been a challenge, especially trying to get them to play at the fast pace that we want to go.”
The new group includes a pair of players that have combined for the past four Bryan County Conference Player of the Year honors in freshmen D.J. Dill from Caddo and Ethan Wilkerson from Madill.
They are joined in the class of first-year college players by Iceland point guard Daniel Halldorsson and Croatian Andrija Brzovic, whose brother Ante starred for the Savage Storm a few years ago, and seven-footer Mihailo Stijovic from Montenegro.
“Wilkerson, Dill, Halldorsson and Brzovic have all shown some good signs, but you sometimes have to remember they are freshmen and sometimes they play like freshmen,” Green said. “Mihailo has had a few injuries, so we haven’t seen him on a daily basis. They are all learning so it’s going to be a work in progress. They are going to be fine and all going to be good enough. But when they are going to reach their potential I don’t know. Three or four of them will definitely get the opportunity to play right away.”
Ball handling will be the biggest factor in how successful the Savage Storm can be as they lack a proven point guard for the first time in roughly six seasons. Adam Dworsky and Brennen Burns filled that role for most of that time frame, earning All-League honors in the process.
It’s been tough going in that area, however, in preseason scrimmages with a plethora of turnovers at times.
“We’ve been turning the ball over at an alarming rate in the preseason,” Green admitted. “One day it’s one guy and the next day it’s someone else. There’s just a lot of uncertainty because there is not much difference in any of them in the ball-handling department. We just need to make sure and get them in positions they can handle. It just gets frustrating if they aren’t playing hard, which is something that needs to happen all the time.
“The thing is they have to be ready to go immediately and don’t have time to just ease into it. We’ve got two tough games in Minnesota to start with and then some tough Lone Star Conference teams after that before starting the conference play. We like the youngsters and think they are going to be good. We just wish they were a little older.”