A year ago at this time, the Mountlake Terrace boys basketball team started one of its most inexperienced lineups in recent memory.
The Hawks returned only one senior with any significant playing time that season.
A year later, the makeup of the Mountlake Terrace roster is far different, at least in terms of veteran talent. The Hawks bring back six seniors, all of whom saw extensive time on the court.
“That’s one of our strengths,” coach Nalin Sood said.
Who’s missing is first-team, all-league guard Jacob Champoux, who ended up being the Hawks’ leading scorer (18 points per game) and unquestionably Mountlake Terrace’s leader on the court.
So far all six seniors – Will Powell, Martinze Johnson, Mitch Haldane, Zach Karels, Ryan Swanstrom and Julian Snow – have as a group taken on the leadership role.
“I can’t single one out. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Sood said. “Hopefully, it’s a good thing. They’re all kind of level right now. … Hopefully, these seniors can have the maturity and the leadership ability to take this team to great heights. It’s a good problem to have. We have so many kids coming back and we just have to see how they do in the leadership part because that’s as important as anything in basketball.”
Four of the six – Karels, Haldane, Snow and Johnson – also played football during the fall and bring a toughness that Sood incorporates into the basketball team.
“A strength of this team is our aggressiveness and our physical style of play,” he said. “That’s because these guys have a football mentality.”
The downside, Sood said, is that it takes a while for the football players to transition to basketball.
“They’ve got football legs and football jump shots,” he said. “It hurts our jump shots. But it sure helps our defense and our rebounding.”
By the end of the December break, the football players usually are back into the swing of hoops, Sood added.
Karels, who was the Hawks’ second-leading scorer (9 points) definitely started playing better in January. Sood expects Karels to assume a larger role in the offense this season. Karels continued to develop and gain confidence in his offensive game during the summer. The goal is for Karels to have more leeway on offense and opportunities to score.
“He has the offensive ability,” Sood said. “We’re going to need him to score a little bit more than last year. Last year, he averaged about 9 points a game, but he had some 18-, 19-point games. … We’re looking for Zach to really step up his offensive game for us this year.”
Karels isn’t necessarily looking to be the leading scorer. He just wants to do whatever he can to help the Hawks win.
“I’m going to try and get everybody involved so we have a pretty even and equal team where teams are going to have trouble stopping us,” said Karels, who hopes to crash the boards and distribute the ball. “I’m just trying to be an all-around player.”
The senior class has been teammates since the seventh grade and has played on AAU and traveling teams. They know each other well.
“We’ve have our chemistry,” Karels said. “That’s going to add to this in the long run. … We can all stick together because we’ve been through a lot.”
Karels expects Swanstrom to play a huge role this season. The 6-foot-9 center should be a force on both sides of the court. When teams look to double team Swanstrom, openings should develop for other players, Karels noted.
“Once we start showing our stuff, that we can do our thing, it’ll open him up and he’ll have a monster year,” Karels added.
Swanstrom’s biggest impact could be on the defensive end, where he is expected to block shots, rebound and control the middle.
“It allows you to do more things on the perimeter,” Sood said.
As for who will be directing the offense, Sood is planning for a committee of several to play point guard. He admits Mountlake Terrace really doesn’t have a true point guard.
Johnson, Powell and sophomore Blake Fernandez likely will share duties.
“It is nice to have that one kid who’s the point guard and who can handle all the dribbling responsibilities and ball handling,” Sood said. “If you don’t have that, everybody has got to take a little bit of the responsibility.”
Sood’s task at hand is improving on the Hawks’ skill level and mental toughness.
“They’re such competitive kids,” Sood said. “We’ll teach them the skills. They’ve got to work on dealing with the challenges. The other pieces are there. I like aggressive teams. I like that I have experience and depth.”
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