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University basketball staying young
Gregory Morrow tries to get past Anthony Spiridis during Western Mustangs men's basketball practice at Alumni Hall on Monday. (DEREK RUTTAN, The London Free Press)
The Western Mustangs men’s basketball team has already accomplished something that would have seemed impossible last year.
It got younger.
Last year’s team had a slew of first-year players, some second years and one veteran, guard Ryan Barbeau in his fifth year.
Predictably with so many young players, the Mustangs struggled. They got better as the season progressed and made a late run for a playoff spot, but came up short, finishing the season with an 8-14 record.
“The issue even with Ryan, we were one of the youngest teams in the country,” Mustangs coach Brad Campbell said. “But now with Ryan graduating and bringing in some rookies, we are even younger than we were last year. During a recent trip to Calgary it just kind of sunk in. We went to Calgary and we travelled with 12 guys and 10 of those 12 were in first or second year and the other two were in their third year. It kind of sinks in, that ‘Wow, that’s pretty young.’ ”
It didn’t help the Mustangs last year when they picked up injuries, including to one of their only big players, six-foot-eight forward Adam Jesperson, who was out for most the season.
This season, he’s struggling with a concussion. It’s been a frustrating couple of years for him.
“I think if you took a skeleton out and pointed to every part of it, he’s had injuries on every part of it,” Campbell said.
When you are young and don’t have a lot of size, the loss of a big player makes a huge difference.
Campbell did go out and recruit another big player, Port Perry native Andrew Van Camp, a six-foot-nine centre who attended Kiski prep school in Pittsburgh.
Van Camp also is injured and has been in a walking boot for two weeks with a stress fracture in his foot. He was reassessed Monday.
“He’s a very highly touted recruit,” Campbell said. “He’s a little raw but he has the potential to be an outstanding player in our league.”
The Mustangs open their OUA season Friday against Ottawa and then take on Carleton on Saturday, both games are at Alumni Hall.
Their lack of overall size limits what the Mustangs can do.
“We’re similar to last year especially without Jesperson and Van Camp in the lineup,” Campbell said. “We’re playing a little bit of small ball. We do have some guards with some size. Our overall size isn’t too bad, our big positions we are small at right now.”
The Mustangs have another issue. While they may have potential, they don’t have a lot of natural scorers outside of Peter Scholtes.
“We’ve got to play great defence,” Campbell said. “One of our issues is scoring. Scholtes is our only real proven scorer. We are trying to find that second or third option that can be consistent. We are a defensive-minded team anyway, but we have to play good defence and the scores are going to have to be relatively low overall for us to be successful.”
Success will also depend on just how much his younger players developed from last year.
“There’s Scholtes of course and Greg Morrow has made some great strides,” Campbell said. “Ryan Higgins (a 6-foot-4 guard) is in his second year and we are going to have to rely on him.
“We are one of those teams obviously that’s not very experienced and we’re very young at the same time. We don’t have those one or two superstars right now that other teams have. We have to rely on our depth and be very team oriented.”
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