Matt TrowbridgeRockford Register Star
Basketball season is five months away, but much of its groundwork was laid in the past month.
“We will play 30 games — a full regular season — in less than a month,” Auburn boys basketball coach Bryan Ott said. “There has to be some lessons coming out of that.”
Here are the top things we learned about NIC-10 contenders from the East Summer League, which featured eight NIC-10 teams among its 16 participants and finished up Tuesday night:
More: East Summer League helps Rockford-area small-school basketball teams grow into contenders
A Texan joins the NIC-10
Junior guard Oba Fasolojo seemed to be involved in almost everything Hononegah did best, whether it was playing pressure on-the-ball defense, shooting 3-pointers or driving and dishing to teammates. He helped Hononegah finish fourth and should fill the shoes of graduated all-conference guard Isaiah Houi.
“He just moved up here from Texas,” Hononegah coach Tom Schmidt said. “He is just getting oriented with the area and his teammates. He has fit in really well. He brings an added dimension to the game on both ends of the floor that we need. He is a strong, physical defender and does a nice job of getting into the paint and finishing and getting shots for his teammates. And he is a great kid.”
Auburn relied too much on quick 3-pointers
Auburn has some of the best 3-point shooters in the league, led by Amir Danforth and Champ Parker. Yet coach Bryan Ott talks more than any coach in the league about relying too much on 3-pointers — especially without setting them up by first going inside and then passing out to the perimeter. That was a huge problem in Tuesday’s 60-48 loss to Guilford in the title game, a game Auburn trailed 35-18 at the half.
“Once you get guys that are going and hitting them in one game, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of making one pass and jacking a shot up,” Ott said. “There were very few possessions we tried to break people down. We relied on 3-pointers right from the jump. It was actually true in the semifinal game against East as well until we decided we could get some stuff in transition and get it inside and attack it downhill.”
Auburn is 20-6 this summer with four games to play. But Tuesday was a reminder Auburn won’t get where it wants to go without being more disciplined.
“It also bothered me a lot that we didn’t seem to understand how to move the ball and pass against the zone,” Ott said. “Those are things we preach and live by. I thought we had these lessons learned. It’s time to get back to the drawing board, but there is not a lot of time left this summer.”
More: Change in plans: How Guilford star sophom*ore Jaden Webster moved from center to guard
East is back on the upswing
East, the worst team in the conference in the early 2000s, had finished third or higher five years in a row until dropping to ninth last year after four would-be starters moved out of state. Finishing third in their own summer league is an indication the E-Rabs will be at least above .500 again after going 7-25 last year.
“We have taken some big steps forward,” East coach Roy Sackmaster said. “We also have learned we are not quite there yet. We are nipping at the heels of Guilford and Auburn, but we are not quite there yet. We’re still pretty young. We just need some more time.”
A star finds a new gear
Guilford’s 5-10, 150-pound junior Branden Chatman looks more like the kid you sit next to in Algebra class than maybe the best basketball player in the conference.
“That helps him in a way,” Guilford coach Chris Dixon saiud. “The game starts and he just doesn’t look like the kid who will come out and score 20. Before you know it, he’s got 16 points on you.”
Chatman is far from unknown in the NIC-10. He made first-team all-conference as a sophom*ore.
“Last year was last year,” Chatman said. “it’s a whole new year. I have to come even better this year.”
He is doing just that. He had 26 points against Hononegah and 18 against Auburn on Tuesday, scoring more than a third of Guilford’s points in the two games.
“He is a great player,” Hononegah coach Schmidt said. “He is athletic. He knows how to play basketball. He is a great shooter. He makes the right decisions with the ball in his hands. He moves well when he doesn’t have the ball. “
“He is going to be our key piece this year,” Guilford star forward Jaden Webster said. “He is going to be our No. 1 or 2 option. We’re going to really need him for offense and defense. He’s just lethal on all three levels: He can shoot, he can drive and he is so shifty with the ball. I just love him.”
A changing of the guard
Guilford has won the NIC-10 the last two years, its first conference titles since 2000. Several core players were on both teams, including Webster. The best teams can be dominant for two years somewhat often. Freeport won the NIC-10 in 1982-83. Hononegah did so in 2008-09. Auburn in both 2011-12 and in 2014-15. But Boylan is the only conference team to win more than two consecutive titles since 1981.
Well, Guilford easily handled all competition in the East Summer League and is 21-1 on the summer.
“We’re going to be here for a good amount of years,” leading scorer Branden Chatman said. “Winning the conference is the expectation we have now. But we want to go above that.”
Guilford has already done something its last two NIC-10 champions did not: The Vikings won their first East Summer League title.
“We didn’t get this last year and we got really upset,” senior forward Jaden Webster said while cradling the traveling trophy. “Our goal this summer was to try and win this and we did it. We have to keep working this summer and we’ll be back next year.”
Guilford looked as balanced as it has the last two years. The Vikings also flashed star power in Chatman and Webster. And they added a new wrinkle.
“This year’s squad is a little different because we’ve got three or four football guys,” Guilford coach Chris Dixon said. “That gives us a sense of toughness that we haven’t always had.”
