Southside Batesville Southerners

Conference: 4A-2

Coach: Brad McGhee

Assistant coach: Kevin Qualls

Last year’s record: 20-11. Third in conference during regular season.

District tournament runner-up, advanced to regional tournament.

“Overall, it was a pretty good season for us,” McGhee said.

This year it’s hard to compare. I had two pretty good players who graduated, but seven returning that got quite a few minutes for us last year. We have a lot of experience, people coming back.

Returning starters: Senior Kevin Jackson, post, 12 points average per game, 6-3, is our leading returning scorer. Logan Brown, senior, 6-0, averaged 5 points per game, but he tore his ACL in January, so he missed the second half of the season, but he’s back with us. Another returning full-time starter is Stephen Norris, 5-10 junior, who averaged 3 points per game for us last year but should average quite a few more this year.

Best inside players: Kevin Jackson and Logan Brown are our two best inside players. Jake Henderson, a 6-1 junior, will also play inside some.

Best outside players: Stephen Norris is a returning starter from last year, and Colby Sutton, a 5-10 senior, was a part-time starter last year after Brown hurt his knee. Levi Henderson is a 6-foot senior, Clayton House is a 5-9 senior, and Payton Wooldridge is a 6-1 senior.

Those five should be in the top seven. There are also a couple sophomores who may be pushing for some minutes.

We have decent athleticism, and we are pretty fundamentally sound. That’s something we try to do better than anything else. We’re not real big, but we play pretty smart. They’ve got quite a bit of experience. Six of those seven are seniors. A lot have played since they were sophomores.

We could have a year similar to last year, if we have guys who step up and fill the void left by the two seniors who graduated last year. I expect them to fill that hole on ball handling and scoring very well. But they have not yet proven themselves in real games.

Team strengths: Our strengths are our experience and basketball IQ. We play pretty smart, and our seven guys who are returning understand how to play in tough situations.

Team weakness: Our weakness is that we lost two of our top three scorers. The concern is for others to step up their games to fill the scoring void, but we have guys who are capable of that.

Games to watch: Any of our conference games will turn out to be ones to watch. Our biggest rivals are probably Heber Springs and Cave City. These are usually very competitive games. Both schools are fairly close to us, so they are a big rivalry.

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