{"id":71216,"date":"2016-11-23T01:05:10","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T08:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/panthers-basketball-enters-league-with-small-fast-lineup\/"},"modified":"2016-11-23T08:05:10","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T08:05:10","slug":"panthers-basketball-enters-league-with-small-fast-lineup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/panthers-basketball-enters-league-with-small-fast-lineup\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers basketball enters league with small, fast lineup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Panther boys warm up for practice Saturday at Montezuma-Cortez High School as the winter sports season begins.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Head coach Mike Hall has high hopes entering his third season at the helm of the Montezuma-Cortez boys basketball team.<\/p>\n

Hall accrued a 10-31 record in his first two seasons with the Panthers, and although the team lost six players from last year\u2019s squad to graduation, it returns a solid group of upperclassmen.<\/p>\n

\u201cBraden Keetch, Juan Arballo and Coby Baer will be contributing seniors for sure,\u201d Hall said. \u201cBut I\u2019m hoping Jasen (Engel) and Daniel (Fernandez) step up and take more of a leadership role. They\u2019ve been through the program now for three years at the varsity level, so they should be able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engel, Fernandez and Obed Simental are all juniors that will likely fill the majority of minutes at the team\u2019s guard positions. And after playing in Hall\u2019s system and steadily improving the past two seasons, the trio may be the best backcourt in the Intermountain League this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s a stretch at all, and I think a lot of the league feels the same way,\u201d Hall said. \u201cWe played with them this summer with the league, and those are the three kids they all talked about. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a stretch at all to say that, and we\u2019ve got Quanah Casey coming back in now as a reserve, that\u2019s a tough backcourt right there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kolby Waltman, who Hall called \u201ca defensive freak,\u201d will also see time in the Panthers backcourt. And then returning seniors Baer, Juan Arballo and Keetch, sophomore Cordell Baer, and transfer junior Cole Veach will make up the team\u2019s inside presence.<\/p>\n

The Cortez bigs may not be dominant presences inside, but they\u2019re all athletic and versatile and should mesh well with the system Hall plans to install.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re small, obviously,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we\u2019re going to be fast this year and we\u2019re going to run and we\u2019re going to utilize all these guards that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

M-CHS finished 4-16 last year and was 1-9 in the 4A\/5A Southwestern League. However, after reclassifying, the Panthers will now play in the Class 3A Intermountain League.<\/p>\n

The step down ensures a new schedule, but it won\u2019t necessarily be an easier one.<\/p>\n

The Intermountain League sent three teams to the Class 3A State Tournament last year in Pagosa Springs, Bayfield and Alamosa. And Alamosa returns its leading scorer after finishing second in the state last season.<\/p>\n

Still, after two years of establishing his system and culture, Hall is optimistic entering the 2016-17 campaign alongside assistant coaches Tim Robinson and Dan Rapp and volunteer assistant Scott McKenzie.<\/p>\n

He said the goal is to finish with a winning record, and that his players have their eyes on a state tournament appearance. The Panthers finished in the basement of the Southwestern League the past two years, but entering their first season in the Intermountain League, Hall is excited to try and change that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hoping to be at the top of the league, and I don\u2019t see there being any reason not to be,\u201d he said. \u201cAlamosa is going to be tough. They\u2019re very tough and they\u2019re coming out of second place at the state tournament, so they\u2019re going to compete. We played them this summer and it was always right down to the wire games, so I think us and Alamosa should be at the top of the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

M-CHS opens its 2016-17 season at the Grand Junction Central Tournament, beginning Thursday, Dec. 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

on backcourt as M-CHS enters Intermountain League<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-71216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71216"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=71216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}