MOUNT VERNON – Seniors Blake Meyer and Dayne Burgess both lauded the camaraderie of the Mount Vernon boys basketball team this season. It’s a trait that Meyer thinks is going to manifest itself in the win column.
“I feel like this year we have a lot of unselfish guys that are willing to move the ball around and play as a team to win games,” Meyer told the Mount Vernon News. “I’m really excited to go out there with these guys and win games, honestly.”
The Yellow Jackets finished 7-16 overall and 5-7 in the Ohio Cardinal Conference before falling 76-48 at Pickerington Central in the first round of the Division I district tournament.
“Everyone is playing together with one collective goal,” Burgess said. “We come to work every day and be the best we can be. It’s just a lot of good energy that we’ve been missing in the past. Everyone’s coming together and it’s looking like it’s going to be a good year.”
Eight seniors graduated from last year’s squad: Cory Berg, Spencer Bills, Evan Boatright, Connor Fisher, Trey Grohe, Wyatt Kirby, Nolan Meier and Aaron Stallard.
This year’s team features five seniors: Burgess, Meyer, Carter Carpenter, Manny Durfee and Alex Reddy.
Mount Vernon coach Nick Coon sees the change in his team.
“I think we have nice balance where we have some size, and we have some ballhandlers and some shooters to go around our size,” he told the News. “But more so than anything, we have really good kids, and they’re led by our five seniors that are with us and have showed a lot of commitment to each other and to our program. Those juniors and those sophomores that are fighting for varsity minutes have (fallen) in line, learning what it takes to be successful at that level.”
There are three juniors in Nolan Belcher, Beau Bridges and Owynn Gleason; and three sophomores in Ben Bridges, Hudson Rohler and Caden Rowland.
“We have a lot of younger talent than we did last year,” Meyer said. “This year, we have a lot of guys that are hungry to win. We had a lot of high expectations for last year and it didn’t really pan out the way we wanted. But I feel like we have high expectations this year and we’re going to meet them.”
Beau Bridges, Burgess, Durfee, Meyer and Reddy were all on the varsity roster last season.
“We only have a couple of returning guys, but we’ve replaced them with a lot of pieces that we were missing last year,” Burgess said.
Coon believes that he has the pieces to take the next step. But with so many newcomers and a truncated offseason because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the preseason is extremely important in terms of the speed of the game and the strength of their opponents.
“We need those guys to be contributors this year, and experience is something that you have to gain by being thrown into the fire,” he said. “It’s not something that you can just talk about and learn about unless you’re actually doing it. We’re hopeful that these scrimmages and this early season will help those guys get acclimated to what the varsity level is all about.”
