The Vero Beach High School varsity boys basketball team opened the 2015-16 campaign with four straight wins heading into a busy week with three consecutive games starting this past Tuesday.
The frenetic schedule should accelerate the process of forming the cohesive unit that Head Coach Chuck Loewendick sought after he was finally able to work with a full ensemble of players.
“Right now we’ve got a lot of talented athletes, but we are not a team yet,” Loewendick said after his team opened district play with a 19-point win over Centennial. “We haven’t been able to work together enough. We just got the football players back and we’re in the process of trying to become a team.
“That means five guys playing as one. It’s a game of five-on-five, not five one-on-one games. Our big challenge right now is to put everybody together. It’s a work in progress.”
This version of Fighting Indians basketball features a bunch of mid-sized players with enough athleticism to overcome the lack of a big front line or dominant force under the basket.
“We are not big at any one particular position, but our overall size is good,” Loewendick explained. The five starters in the Centennial game ranged in height from 6’2” to 6’4”. All have long wing spans. The coach doesn’t want any specialists or one-dimensional players. He will deploy a sticky half-court man defense. The idea is to pressure the other team into turnovers and create fast-break opportunities.
Scoring has been balanced thus far. Malik Clarke poured in a season-high 28 points against Centennial. Kojak Richardson led the way with 18 in the opener vs. Westwood and 19 against Heritage. Jacob Bell and Tyler Washington shared scoring honors with 10 each in a 2-point squeaker at Port St. Lucie.
“When you have that type of balance it is much harder to guard against,” Loewendick said.
Loewendick would like his guys to toss up 12 to 18 three-pointers per game, but they had better be wide-open shots. That may be wishful thinking given the tenacity of high school defenses. This team is also well suited for dribble drives, pull-up jumpers and pick-and-rolls.
“We’ve got some good shooters but we haven’t shot it well yet,” the coach said. “I think there are still some nerves out there. They haven’t quite got their game going, but we definitely like to shoot the three and some of our guys can certainly do it.”
In the early going Loewendick went nine- to ten-deep without any major drop-off in the quality of play. The starters against Centennial were Richardson, Clarke, Bell, Tyler Washington and Tyrell Washington. Bell is a sophomore, the others are seniors.
“Quite a few of these guys have been together since elementary school,” said Loewendick. “They understand how hard we are going to work. Our program has been built on playing hard, playing smart and playing together. Those are the three things that are painted on our locker room wall.
“We’ve added some guys and we are trying to work them in. Some of them are not yet adjusted to the intensity and effort required to play in our program. But for the most part these guys come every day ready to go.”
One of those newcomers is senior Tyler Washington. He came off the football field, and worked his way into the starting lineup.
“I’m originally from Vero Beach and I was really looking forward to coming back home,” Washington said of a high school career that began at Sebastian River High and continued for two years at Montverde Academy near Orlando. “For my senior year I wanted to come back and play for Coach Loewendick.
“I’m just trying to get back into my groove. I can play guard or forward, basically whatever we need at the time. Coach is good with matchups and putting me where I need to be. He demands a lot, especially on defense. I’m excited to be back home and I really enjoy playing for him.”
