The Harrisburg Bulldogs boys basketball team, losing only two seniors from last years team that played in the district semifinals last season, look to improve on last years record of 12-14. During last season, head coach Kyle Fisher said “We started off pretty well then we hit kind of a rough spot where we lost some close ballgames to some really good teams. Then we started playing some really good basketball at the end of the year before losing to Eugene which was a really good ball club. We had a little bit of a tough year last year but we are excited about this year.

“We will not have a lot of newcomers to the varsity this year,” Fisher continued. “We’ve got a ton of experience coming back with our top eight scorers coming back on this team so we’ll have a pretty solid rotation of guys that played quite a bit last year and some others that may step up a bit.

“Instead of a starting five, I’ll give you six. Most nights we’ll start junior Trevor Wheeler , junior Tanner Lanes, junior Jace Carr, senior Wyatt Robinson and sophomore Braden Ott but then junior Brayton Stephenson is kind of a sixth man for us and he’ll start a lot of nights if we need to go big.” 

Fisher said they “will look to Lanes and Carr as they are two all conference guys that are returning. They’ve been starters since day one of their freshman year. They’ve been really good for our program and have been really good players for us this last year. They’ve both been good scorers but this year they’ll have to be not just scorers, but playmakers, they’ll have to get other guys involved, get other guys shots and they can do that. They’ve been working toward the the last two years. This really is their team on the offensive end. Our defense really starts with Wyatt Robinson, he’s our best athlete, our strongest kid, our fastest kid. He’ll get the toughest defensive assignment every night. Wyatt really keys our press every night so we look to him for defense, for energy and senior leadership as well.”

“We like to play fast and push the ball offensively to get guys in position to make plays. We run kind of a motion offense, not necessarily a set pattern, we just try to put guys in spots where they can be successful. Defensively, we’ll play mostly full court man-to-man to try to pressure other teams into doing some things they don’t want to do whether that be playing a little faster or a little slower. We’ve got a nice little mixture of players and we think we’ll have a pretty good year this year.

Having already beaten New Bloomfield 67-21 in their first game of the year along with Sturgeon 62-52 on Friday, the Bulldogs lost to Moberly 67-65.  Fisher said “Every year we go in with the goal of trying to win the district title. Most years we have an idea of who we’ll have to play and beat to do that. But this year we won’t know until December 11 when the district assignments will be released. So we want to get to the district title game and hopefully win it. Then, whatever happens after that happens but this team has had some good success over the years, . Two years ago when a lot of these guys were freshmen, they got to a district title game and didn’t win it. Last year, they got to the district semifinal game and lost to a really good team, so this years teams got a good chance to make a little run this year. 

Starting Monday December 7, the Bulldogs will participate in the Centralia Tournament, which runs through December 12.