Boys basketball compete in Granbury torunament

The boys basketball team enters today’s Granbury tournament with a 5-2 record on the season and will face both Colleyville Heritage and Everman in this afternoon’s games. Head coach Kyle Herrema eyes the tournament as a way to strengthen the team in the long run.

“I am really looking forward to the competition and playing people we normally don’t play.” Herrema said. “The teams are in our pool have a combined 19-9 record so we face some good competition. I always love seeing the boys build team chemistry and camaraderie in these tournaments as well. As always, I love riding in the yellow dog too.”

Last Tuesday night, Nov. 29, the team defeated Frisco Centennial 37-34. Braden Ledebur led the team as he put up 21 points against Centennial’s stingy defense. Jackson Carswell also contributed eight points.

“They had a very solid defense, and it was frustrating to play against as we had some trouble running our sets,” Carswell said.

After the win, the team had a quick turnaround to prepare for the weekend’s Prosper tournament. In the first game of the tournament, the Leopards fell to Frisco Wakeland 54-42. Kyle Olson led the team in scoring with 15 points. Emotions ran high in this game as the team faced longtime assistant coach Justin Kauffman, who is the assistant varsity coach at Wakeland.

“[It’s] hard to explain the exact emotion, having coached there for nine years I had a chance to coach most every kid on that team,” Kauffman said. “I have such a respect for how hard they have worked and for the kind of young men they are. Not only that, over those nine years I worked with great coaches who are now great friends.”

Herrema and Kauffman’s relationship goes way back, but it may have contributed to the team’s loss to Wakeland.

“I was an assistant coach at Coppell when Coach Kauffman was a senior so I have known him for nearly 17 years,” Herrema said. “It was fun to play against each other but they definitely had an advantage in that he was calling out all of our sets. We talked about changing our calls for the one game, but long term, it is better for us to not have any confusion.”

In the second game of the Prosper Tournament, the team faced Wilmer-Hutchins and fell 45-43 on a buzzer beater.

“The first two games we came out really flat in the third quarter,” Herrema said. “We need to change our mindset about how we approach the second half.”

Early Saturday the team defeated Frisco Legacy Christian 55-26, holding them to 6 points in the second half. Later that day they took down Frisco High 58-41 with Jackson Carswell leading the team in points with 19.

“I think we have grown a lot as a team; we played some solid games against the teams we faced in the tournament, we played very good with just a couple mental errors late in games,” Carswell said. “[However] we can improve on being more physical under the basket, especially on the boards.”

After a strong start to the season, the team hopes to end the tournament portion of the season on a high note.

“My expectations for the Granbury tournament are that we go out and we win every single game and win the tournament,” sophomore Luke Ledebur said. “That’s how you have to go into every single tournament or game, with the complete confidence that your team can get the job done.”