2024-25 Boys Basketball team

Journal-Advocate Article By | Colorado Preps

PUBLISHED:

In his first year with the program, during the 2022-23 season, Hodges took a 6-14 team from the year before and led it to 10 wins. Last year, the Bulldogs took it a step further, finishing with a 19-6 record while qualifying for the Great 8 in the state tournament.

The Bulldogs saw a major scoring boost from two of its seniors alongside then-sophomore Rhyder Bayne, who averaged 11.7 points per game.

“Last year, I would say our biggest improvement came in just basic skills like shooting and ball handling. We stopped turning the ball over so much and the kids really played well together,” Hodges said. “Rhyder helped, but we had four or five players last year that could really shoot the three and that wasn’t the case when I got here. We spent probably an inordinate amount of time working on shooting skills, because I thought that was our greatest need. And then, of course, we spent a lot of time working on our defense.”

Bayne, for his part, said his biggest strength was his outside shot.

“Everybody just got older, obviously. We had a kid that was injured my freshman year, Aiden Hill, and then he came back sophomore year and did a good job for us. He helped with our depth,” Bayne said. “We had the height down low, and we had three-point shooting outside, so the inside-to-out work was just phenomenal.”

Where success flourished, however, a vacuum was left behind. Following the season, the Bulldogs lost three of their top four scorers to graduation. They had combined for 31.4 PPG, which leaves much to be desired on the offensive end.

Hodges acknowledged the challenges that would create, but Bayne said the excitement level is still running high.

“We only have one senior on the team and our tallest player is 6-2, so we don’t really have any size,” Hodges said. “We have some obstacles to overcome, but we’ve got four kids that got fairly good experience last year, one of them a starter in Rhyder.

“There’s always pitfalls when you coach a young team that you have to contend with. I look at our schedule and I don’t think there’s many teams on our schedule we can’t beat, but also, I don’t think there’s many teams on our schedule that can’t beat us. The biggest challenge I have coming out is trying to get these kids to be consistent.”

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