Dec 5, 2016 By Bill Hughes for The 2 min read

Last season, third-year Yough boys basketball coach Casey Copeman led the program to its first postseason berth in three years.

But whereas he had plenty of experience on last year’s team that went 16-6 with eight seniors, including all five starters and the sixth man, Copeman returns one senior on a team riddled with youth.

“(Senior power forward) John McClaren is the only returning senior with playoff experience who understands what it takes to compete on a daily routine at practice to be successful in games,” he said. “(Point guard/shooting guard) Danny Gibler is a junior guard with a lot of varsity experience who got some playoff experience last year.

“We will need our young players to grow up quick on the basketball court by increasing their basketball IQ, have confidence in themselves, develop the ‘next play’ mentality, and recover quickly from our mistakes.”

Copeman knows that his team is young, and he is fully aware that they must learn through experience.

“Our goals this season are to prepare our freshmen and sophomores to be able to compete at a varsity level with a really young team with not a lot of basketball background,” he said.

“We want to make it back into the playoffs and it starts with working hard in practice on fundamentals.”

Junior power forward Levi Graft and a quartet of freshmen, point guard Ray Halahurich, shooting guard/small forward Caden Kastronious, 6-6 power forward Josh Obradovich, and shooting guard Cody Ulander, were all players that Copeman mentioned as showing the right attitude and work ethic in practice.

Yough is in Section 1-AAAA this year with Deer Lakes, Derry, Freeport, Indiana, Mount Pleasant, and Valley.

“Indiana is always a powerhouse in the section,” Copeman said. “I’m not familiar with the new teams in the section.”

Yough opens its season Dec. 9 when it plays in the Brownsville Tip-Off Tournament against the host Falcons.