North Cedar eyes better boys’ basketball season

CLARENCE - The North Cedar boys' basketball team has had it rough for the past few seasons.

The Knights 9-14 last yea and 6-17 the previous season.

The Knights return four seniors this year in Mason Minar, Owen Meyer, Greg Hansen and Brady Lehrman. Minar contributed 231 points, 63 rebounds and 44 assists last season. Meyer scored 48 points and 13 rebounds.

North Cedar started its season with a 61-36 loss to Cascade, but the players are determined to have a better campaign.

'Our goals are to work together as a team, get a dunk in each game and to win more games than last year,” Minar said.

'We would like to improve on the amount of points we score, to get stronger under the rim and control the tempo of the game,” Meyer said.

In order for the Knights to accomplish these goals, the players need to rotate well on defense and box out when a shot goes up. If the Knights can push the ball up the floor faster, they should be able to control the tempo of the game and create opportunities to take the open shot.

The team will dress 13 players for now. One of the 13 is a freshman, Kael Unruh. In the past, the Knights only have dressed juniors and seniors but had two freshman dress last year and a few sophomores. They also are dressing three sophomores this year - Ethan Sahr, Caden Wendt and Keon McCullough. They also have five juniors dressing along with the four seniors.

The consensus from the players is they think they're ready because the past few weeks of practice have been hard and they've worked just as hard.

The Knights are at Durant tonight.

'We are going to go out and do our best,” Hansen said. 'We had a bad Tuesday against Cascade, but Friday is hopefully going to be our day.”