By Justin Sampson (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
When Camdenton grabbed its first district tournament win in four years, that was enough to make Craig Campbell enthusiastic about where the program was headed. That was two seasons ago.
In his second year, the Lakers ended a 37-year district championship drought with a win over Lebanon.
After collecting nine wins in the previous two seasons, notching 17 victories and playing in a Class 5 sectional is a turnaround worthy of more enthusiasm.
“My first year, we only won five games, but we were in another 17 of them,” said Campbell. ”That showed the players how much more they had to work at it. Then last year’s group took that and ran with it. As long as they keep buying in and working hard, I can see us continuing what we built upon last year.”
Mimicking last season’s success will mean dealing with depleted forces in the early portion of the schedule. All-Ozark Conference honorees Keaton Virtue and Viterio Anderson are gone, while the bulk of the Lakers’ core has spent the fall focusing on a successful football campaign.
Preseason workouts have been populated by younger players that have been standouts at the junior varsity level. Senior Brandon Pasley has been the elder statesmen of those open gyms, so naturally it has fallen on him to set the tone.
Campbell has been pleased with the job he and the others have done.
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“They’ve all improved. Not to steal the line of: ‘If you played last year’s self, could you beat them one-on-one,’ but that’s how I feel with this group. Every single one of them has worked hard enough since the end of last year to do that.”
“We’ve seen the growth of some younger guys that makes me think they could help us on varsity earlier than later.”
Pasley will return with the second highest scoring average at 6.1 points per game to go with 3.3 assists.
Gridiron standout Paxton DeLaurent finished second in virtually every category last winter (14 PPG, 5.0 RPG, 2.8 APG, 1.7 SPG), a fact that earned him some ribbing from Campbell. The door is open for him to improve on those numbers and become the biggest weapon on the hardwood as well.
Drake Miller, another senior, will also earn heavy minutes after serving as the sixth man last year. Classmate Treyvor Watson only played in 10 games as a junior, but will be needed for his 6’4” frame.
A trio of athletic juniors: Cooper Ezard, Joel Mason, and Zach Walz, will also factor into the mix after spending most of their time on the junior varsity squad as sophomores.
Campbell stressed that this group does not want to take a step backwards. Even with the impressive fall the Lakers have put together, they understand how big of a leap they took for the basketball program. Campbell believes they have the firepower to keep the upward trend going if their defense can match it.
“At full strength, we’ll be better offensively than last year,” he said. “We have guys that can shoot, drive, and make good passes. They want to be able to put up points, but to do that, they understand they have to play defense. We’ll try to amp it up even more than last year and push the tempo.”
Camdenton begins its season on Nov. 25 against Capital City.
