SE Illinois News

The DuQuoin High School boys' basketball team faced a challenging start to the season when they lost two junior guards who were expected to contribute heavily to the team's success this year.

Luckily for second-year Head Coach Justin Barrington, however, other players have stepped up.

"We've got a freshman Lamontay Daugherty," Barrington said. "We've thrown him into the fire: he's starting. He's scoring double-digit points for us. And our leading scorer right now is a senior, Caleb Vogel -- he's scoring 21 per game for us right now. He plays on the wing for us, and we feel that those two can cause some mismatch problems for a lot of teams. They can both handle the ball and they can both post up as well, so that helps us on the offensive end."

Additionally, the Indians lineup features another group of players that have done a fantastic job of supplementing their two top scorers, Daugherty and Vogel. 

"Braden Heape, he's a 6-foot-4-inch senior and he plays inside for us, and he's getting around 8.5 points per game for us," Barrington said. "We've also got a 5-foot-10-inch junior, Ashton Smith; he's getting between seven and nine per game. Those have been our four main scorers. Will Woodside, Shamar Adams and Donovan McBride have been solid contributors, as well, for us."

Such a combination gives the Indians considerable athletic ability in order to beat teams in transition and to get stops defensively. Barrington has been able to rely on that athleticism to get the team past an overall lack of experience at the varsity level. 

"I think we have the athletes and the players in place to be able to pressure the basketball defensively and get out in the open floor," he said. "We can finish in transition if we use our athletic ability. When we get out in transition and we come at you, we've got the opportunity to be a dangerous ball club."

That doesn't mean the players haven't been working hard to improve in other areas.

Barrington would like the group to perform better in the half-court set and in the post-up game; he would also like to see them improve on defensive communication, which has been a weak point this year. 

"If we can improve on our half-court offense and scoring in a set or needing a bucket with the game slowed down, we need to improve in those ways so we can do that," he said. "And I think we will as time goes on. I feel we've progressed as a team from the beginning of the season. We're gaining more experience and more confidence at the varsity level.  We also need to do a better job of communicating among ourselves on defense. We've got to the point now where we're stopping initial sets, but when they when they continue, we've got to continue our talking and our movement defensively and help with our athletic ability. If we help with our movement and our communication, our athletic ability will take over from there."  

If the team keeps improving, Barrington believes they can be dangerous down the stretch, especially if they get some players back from injury leave. Those reinforcements could make them even more formidable from an athletic standpoint -- hoping to peak at exactly the right time.

"We want to be a team that gets out into the open floor and runs and pressures in full-court, man-to-man defense," Barrington said. "We want to be a team that wears the opposition out and forces them to play how we want to play and not let them dictate what we do. I really feel that we've got better basketball ahead of us."