Falcons look to improve under Hedrick
CONNELLSVILLE — Connellsville head basketball coach Andy Hedrick is anxiously awaiting for the start of the 2015-16 season to see if all of the work during the off-season pays off.
Hedrick got off to a late start with the Falcons last year which saw them come up a little short in several games that resulted in the squad winning only five.
Now that he has been with the kids during the off-season and through the summer he thinks his kids will show a lot of improvement this year this season.
“We worked hard over the summer. These kids put in a lot of time, but we still have a long way to go. I think we’re more on the same page than what we were at this time last year,” he said. “The kids played hard for me last year and we let some games slip away from us. It was tough because we were learning plays on the fly and I made some mistakes. Now that we’ve had a year together I’m looking for some improvement.”
Hedrick says last year’s team was dominated by seniors so he has a lot of inexperience coming back with only one returning starter in senior Colby Shipley. He says despite their inexperience he thinks the team is more in tune with what he wants to accomplish on the floor.
To help bring the team along Hedrick will rely on seniors Dustin Wiggins and Tyler Evans. Both saw some action off the bench last year and will be counted on to increase their workload. Josh Campbell is a first year senior looking to earn some minutes this year.
Hedrick thinks with the work put in during the off-season the Falcons will be a little more fundamentally sound. “We worked on a lot of the little fundamental things during the off-season,” he said. “We shot the ball a lot. I think we will show improvement in that area. We still are working to improve our defense.”
Hedrick said he likes his kids and they work hard for him but he says the main the thing the kids and the program needs is to experience some success. He says the Falcons need a couple of good wins to get their confidence up. He says the kids are fine physically but a couple of wins will help them gain trust in their abilities.
“We don’t have a proven varsity scorer so everybody has to contribute,” he says. “I think we have a couple of kids that can do that but they have to prove to themselves they can score at this level. We need a couple of early wins to get some of that confidence up.”
Hedrick is excited about his sophomore group lead by Seth Younkin who earned a lot of varsity minutes last year. “Seth could be strong for us, because big men don’t dominate this section,” he said. “We hope that is an advantage for Seth. He may have to guard some smaller and quicker people, but he is a good enough athlete to do that.”
Hedrick said juniors Hunter Lonigro, Alek Detwiler and Jacob Tzan should get a lot of minutes. He also anxious to get a look at sophomore Treyvon Clayton and junior Anthony Brown who are new to the team this year.
Hedrick talked about the one thing the Falcons must work through to make the season successful. “The big thing we have to fight through is dealing with adversity,” he said. “There were times last year when we played very well and then a couple of things go wrong and we go into a slide. We’ve got to improve our mental toughness. We’ve thrown that out there to them as an obstacle we have to get over. We’ve got to learn how to grind it out every night.”
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