With the football season now over at Charles Henderson, the basketball team began full preparations this week for the upcoming season.

First year head coach Shelby Tuck is relishing the opportunity to work with his new players.

“It’s a lot of fun to get the guys in here and get back to basketball,” Tuck said. “A lot of them are excited and are bringing a lot of energy. We are really looking forward to the start of the season.”

The team has been working together since mid-October, but without the full team in attendance, Tuck focused much of the practice on team fundamentals while implementing some of their offensive and defensive sets.

“We were able to put in a lot of our offensive and defensive sets in,” Tuck said. “We had the summer to work, so it won’t be hard to get the guys familiar with everything.”

As a new head coach coming in Tuck is excited to have his full team at practice.

“I told them I wasn’t prepared to have them back this week,” Tuck said. “To have those guys back is great. We are looking forward to great things from them this season.”

All summer long Tuck and the team used their practice time to get familiar with one another and to learn the new system. With the first game a couple weeks ago, the Trojans are on to the next phase.

“This is the next step,” Tuck said. “We played a lot of basketball this summer, but didn’t have a lot of time for practice or to work on fundamentals. We are looking forward to November 29.”

Tuck feels like they are close to where they want to be on the basketball court.Now it’s time to start concentrating off the court as well.

“We have high expectations for them at Charles Henderson in the classroom,” Tuck said. “It starts with being a great student, citizen and being able to take care of your family. If they can do those three things, basketball will be easy.”

The Trojans hope to kick the Tuck era off on the right foot in 2016.

“It would be great to come out of the box and play good, strong fundamental basketball,” Tuck said. “I have talked to some people in the community and they are really excited. We will have great support.”

The Trojans are slated to begin the season on November 29.