Dogies are about more than numbers

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
After graduating several seniors last season, including their leading scorer, the Dogies Basketball team is coming into the 2019-20 season relatively young and certainly inexperienced. The squad is returning only one starter in Dylon Tidyman and a couple of other players who saw varsity time last year. 
“We knew we were inexperienced and young, but didn’t realize how much so until I saw the numbers,” Von Eye admitted. “We return only 17 points per game from last year and 16.4 of those were from Dylon, so seeing the numbers puts things in a different perspective.” 
Looking at the number of games played, Tidyman was in them all but two when he was sidelined with an ankle sprain. Von Eye got 17 games out of Zach Purviance with a few minutes here and there, while Peyton Tystad played in most all of the games until the end when an injury to his eye kept him on the bench. 
“From there we maybe have a couple of guys who played in seven games and that was mostly in trash time at the end,” Von Eye admitted. “But, we have a bunch of guys who are working their tails off and practicing very hard, however we have to be patient.”
While these numbers may be a bit concerning, the number of guys out for the season is looking good with 27. There are five seniors returning including Tidyman, Tystad, Cooper and Jake Deveraux and Bradyn Frye. 
Seven juniors and seven sophomores join this crew. Juniors include Purviance, Landon Engle, Gavin Gray, Chauncey Jenerou, Dayton McFarland, Christian Santos and Bridger Alishouse. Slade Roberson, Aidan and Avery Chick, Hayden Overman, Braden Jenkins, Neil Whitney and Keondre Cummings represent the sophomore class.
New to high school basketball this season are eight freshmen. They are Taten Engle, Quint Perino, Hogan Tystad, Tell Tavegie, Zander White, Zander Larson, Kalan VanGundy and Yestin Davis. 
Von Eye anticipates that Frye will be playing a bigger role this season and that Landon Engle will also be seeing minutes and will round out the team’s top returning players. Roberson and Taten Engle will be a couple of younger kids who Von Eye is looking to provide some minutes on the varsity floor.
“There will definitely be some pups on the floor this season, and they will be fine, but there may some deer-in-the-headlights situations early on in the season,” Von Eye chuckled. “We are going to be looking to some of these younger guys to step into the roles that were vacated due to graduation.”
Despite the lack of experience returning for the Dogies, the team hasn’t backed off their aspirations for the season.
“We are still shooting for a state tournament berth, and I’m confident that we will be in the mix with the rest of 3A by the end of the season,” Von Eye nodded. “We will have some trials and tribulations early on, because we have a loaded schedule. But that’s good because that is what prepares us best for the end of the season. We just have to keep on working and take each day as an opportunity to get better.”
The Dogies are also a little short on size this year, so Von Eye’s game plan is to play as they have in past seasons with an uptempo game reliant on full court pressure defense which he hopes will get their opponents out of their comfort zone and provide some easy offensive options for his team.
“Though we’re not all that big, we do have some length which is awesome for the pressure defense we will play again this year. We have a couple of kids who are in that six-foot range and a couple of long 6’2” kids so we really will be playing pressure defense,” he anticipated. “Half-court defense will be scary for us against teams who have a good big. For the first time in several years, even though we haven’t had really tall kids, we’ve had very strong guys on the inside that could move people around at will and we don’t have that now.” 
The Dogies had a practice run in front of fans last Saturday at the annual Orange and Black Scrimmage, but will face their first test of the season against the Wildcats in Custer this Friday. 
“Custer will be tough as nails,” Von Eye predicted. “The last three years, they’ve played the same crew of kids so they are veteran seniors now. They started out like we are right now, so it will be a challenge, but we will certainly play hard and see how we match up with them.”