Trojans prepare for new season with new faces

Published 10:20 pm Wednesday, November 17, 2010

While the Trojans may have just left the football field for the year, the basketball court at Charles Henderson is gearing up for a new season.

The Trojans will be entering the new season hoping to build off of last year’s success and reach the playoffs for the first time in several seasons.

But the team will have to do so with new faces all around.

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Coming into the new season, there is just two returning players from the 2009-10 season, as forwards Michael Zackery and Devin Davenport will be back and ready for action.

The only other upperclassman on the team is Matthew Lucas, with the remaining other players being sophomores.

But the lack of experience on the varsity level is not something that head coach Carl Hollis said he is worried about.

“It’s going to be a tough road for us getting early on, but we are getting pretty good experience. Down the stretch, I think we are going to get better and better.

“We have got to keep working, and developing good work ethics.

“It’s going to take a few more games for us to get settled in. They are getting the feel of what it takes, but they are not going to back down from anyone,” the coach added.

The season did not get off to the start Hollis or the Trojans were hoping.

Tuesday night on the road against Dothan, CHHS fell 56-45.

While the score may not look too bad, the outcome could have gone differently for the Trojans if not for the 24 turnovers committed.

According to the coach, the inability to run the offense was one of the main problems against Dothan on Tuesday.

“We have to learn the offense. We didn’t do a good job of executing down the stretch and that hurt us. We fought back, and had chances to score but we didn’t,” he said.

Zackery, who was a main contributor for the Trojans last season will be looking to lead the way again for CHHS this season.

But there will be some other players ready to take some of the scoring pressure off of Zackery’s shoulders as well.

“We have some younger guys who are actually shooting the ball just as well (as Zackery),” Hollis said.

“One of the pluses of this group is that we have four or five guys who can score and you got at least three of four decent outside scorers. So you know they are going to get better and better because the love of the game,” the coach added.

Even though things may not have gotten off on the right foot, Hollis said he expects big things from this group.

“I expect us to win this year,” he said. “We talked about what we have to do (after the Dothan loss) and we talked about doing it now, this season because tomorrow is not promised.

“We got to do what we got to do now, we are going to start off learning but after three or four games, we are going to do great things.”

The Trojans will be on the road again Friday night, playing against Barbour County. The first home game will be on Nov. 30 against Greenville.