GREENVILLE – The Greenville boys basketball team will have a new look this season as the Green Wave lost all of their starters from last year’s roster to graduation.
Last year’s senior class of Isaiah Gable, Daniel Harper, Devin Hendrix, Peter Pandey, Kyle Phillips, Aaron Rich and Trae Wood won’t be an easy one to replace. Those seven seniors tallied more than 90 percent of Greenville’s scoring last season, and three of them now are playing college ball.
Though Greenville lost its big stars, coach Kyle Joseph is encouraged by the talent Greenville still has in its program.
“We should be a balanced team with a number of guys ready to start and contribute on any given night,” Joseph said. “All 10 guys on the roster will need to be ready to play a valuable role for the team.”
Leading the way for Greenville are four returning varsity lettermen: senior forward Will Coomer, senior forward Noah Vanhorn, senior guard Kyle Mills and sophomore guard Marcus Wood.
Coomer and Mills are Greenville’s top returning scorers after averaging 2.4 points per game last season. Coomer also is the top returning rebounder having pulled down 1.3 boards a game last season while Wood is the top returning distributer after averaging 1.2 assists a game last season.
Joining Greenville’s varsity roster this season is senior forward Ethan Emrick, junior forward Noah Walker, junior guard Jordan Dill, junior guard Grant Minnich, junior guard Ethan Saylor and sophomore guard Tyler Beyke.
“How hard we play is our biggest strength,” Joseph said. “Beyond that we have quality depth and a very unselfish group that just wants to compete.”
An unselfish attitude should be a hallmark of this Greenville team.
“We should be an exciting team to watch this year,” Joseph said, “full of guys who are willing to sacrifice their body, playing time and stats for the good of the team.”
While the team expects its depth to be an asset, the Green Wave will need to work to find open scoring opportunities as they don’t have an established scorer to lead the offense.
“We are going to continue to work on getting great shots, either by ball movement or by executing set plays,” Joseph said.
To get good looks, Greenville will try to turn defensive stops into scoring opportunities.
“Defensively we want to pressure our opponents into mistakes and hopefully wear them down,” Joseph said. “Offensively we would like to turn defense into offense and use our versatility, patience and unselfishness to get great looks.”
Even though Greenville lost a lot of talent from a year ago, Joseph hopes his team can improve on last year’s runner-up finish in the Greater Western Ohio Conference’s North Division and dethrone Sidney.
“I believe that every season should start with an expectation that we are trying to win the GWOC North,” Joseph said. “But the most important goal is to continue to improve and be playing our best basketball come the end of the season.”
