EVERETT — The Archbishop Thomas Murphy basketball team resembles a puzzle.
The Wildcats have all the pieces of a potentially strong team; it’s just a matter of combining all those elements into a cohesive unit.
Archbishop Murphy is coming off its most successful season to date. The Wildcats won the Northwest 1A League championship and then advanced to the state tournament for the first time in school history.
But some key starters from that team, including league most valuable player Wes Taylor and point guard Luke Hagel, graduated, leaving behind some big shoes to fill.
While the Wildcats may be lacking some experience, they hope to compensate with their natural abilities.
“We lost a lot of our key position players but we still have a lot of athletes of our team this year,” said senior-to-be guard Kyle Wilkins. “That’s the one plus that we have. We have more speed and more quickness out of the upcoming team. The only thing we lack is experience.”
Archbishop Murphy coach Jerry Zander also can’t remember seeing a more athletically gifted group of individuals but one that will require a lot of work in the coming months.
“What we have to do is turn all those great athletes into a good basketball team,” Zander said. “That’s going to be kind of the project for the next six months before the season begins.”
Zander got his first look at his team this month as the Wildcats played in the Everett High School Summer Basketball League, which wrapped up its three-week slate of games last week.
For the Wildcats, the goal was not to necessarily win games but it was more to get back in the swing of basketball.
“We’ve only had two practices,” Wilkins said. “It (league) is just to see how we play together. We just try to get together during this part of the season so we have some foot to stand on before we go into the season.”
One player who will have a prominent role next season is 6-foot-6 center Chris Mitchell, a player junior-to-be guard Stan Smith expects to shoulder much of the scoring load.
“He’s going to be a senior next year so this should be his prime year,” Smith said. “That’s something I’m going to be looking forward to is having that big guy right in the middle.”
Zander has full confidence Mitchell is ready to assume greater responsibilities on offense. Mitchell, also a standout on the Archbishop Murphy state champion baseball team, has committed himself to hitting the weight room and bulking up, according to Zander.
“He also will be spending three or four days a week just working on basketball in the morning,” he added. “That should really help him and will help us as a team quite a bit.”
As far as the point guard position, Zander was hoping someone might stand out during the summer league and he wasn’t disappointed.
“So far Stan has been the one who’s stepped up and is trying to take control at the point guard spot,” Zander said.
Archbishop Murphy’s appearance at the state tournament was a brief one as the Wildcats went two-and-out.
But just making it to state was a confidence boost for the players, who recall that many observers picked Archbishop Murphy to finish near the bottom of the league.
“It put Murphy basketball on the map,” Smith said. “We got to state. We didn’t do as well as we wanted to. A couple of shots didn’t fall, but if they fall, we win some of those games.”
The success of the basketball team was nothing new to a school in which the football, soccer and baseball teams all won state championships this past year.
Players now go into the season almost expecting to be successful, Zander said.
“They know … how to practice, how to play hard and what it is going to take to be successful,” he added. “Whenever they get success, I think it’s a good thing. It has to carry over to next season.”
The Wildcats usually attend a team camp at Gonzaga, but Zander decided to do something different this summer.
The players and coaches instead will head to Warm Beach in Stanwood for four days and spend the entire week practicing basketball together.
Zander said that he thought it would be more beneficial for the team to go over their offense and defense as opposed to playing the typical 12 to 14 games at Gonzaga.
“We’ll just practice basketball from 7 a.m. to 11 at night with no distractions,” Zander said.
Archbishop Murphy’s move up to Class 2A comes with some new challenges. Most of the schools in the new Cascade Conference are larger than the Wildcats.
“The guys are bigger. The guys are faster,” Zander said. “We’re going to have to work that much harder to prepare for it.”
Smith is certain Archbishop Murphy will rise to the challenge.
“I’m pretty confident that we’re going to pull it together,” he said. “We’ve got great athletes on our team.”
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