Waukon boys basketball team plays to 6-15 season with starting line-up full of underclassmen
The Waukon boys basketball team played its way to a 6-15 season record but shot its way to a new school record in the process. A new season-best mark of 170 three-point field goals far surpassed the previous record of 138 established by the 2000-2001 basketball Indians.
“As far as season highlights go, this was one of the best outside shooting teams that we have had in Waukon,” Waukon boys basketball coach Jed Hemann said. “Our shooting kept us close in a lot of games.”
That overall season mark included a record of 2-10 in Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) play, leaving the Indians in sixth place in the final seven-team NEIC standings. Those two wins in conference play came against Oelwein, the team that finished below the basketball Tribe in this year’s final standings.
Lack of experience may have played the biggest factor in this season’s lowest win total in several seasons, as the Indians returned just one starter from last season’s 12-win squad in senior Tanner Mathis, but then lost him early in the season to a knee injury aggravated from the football season. Mathis was one of just three seniors on this year’s squad and one of several players who came into the season with injuries from the fall football campaign.
With all that leadership and all of their starting line-up returning next season, a great deal of optimism also returns in looking ahead to next winter. But even with that abundance of returning promise, Coach Hemann knows there is still much work to be done in order to show improvement from this season’s 6-15 effort.
“During the off-season, our number-one goal needs to be improving defensively,” he said. “We have some good athletes and I know our guys will put in more time becoming even better athletes before next season. We need to be able to use our athletic ability to be a consistently strong defensive team. In addition to our defense, we need to find some ways to get easy baskets inside. We had a very good shooting team this season, and I believe we can be even better, but we need to be able to score inside to make our shooting even more lethal. We are not likely to add much height in the off-season, but we can improve our ball handling, strength and become better at finishing around the basket.”
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