{"id":71220,"date":"2016-11-23T01:09:11","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T08:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-basketball-begins-season-with-new-coaches\/"},"modified":"2016-11-23T08:09:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T08:09:11","slug":"mancos-basketball-begins-season-with-new-coaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-basketball-begins-season-with-new-coaches\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos basketball begins season with new coaches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Mancos boys basketball team runs through a passing drill at practice.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Mancos Blue Jays will enter the 2016-17 season with a new head man.<\/p>\n

After falling in last year\u2019s regional tournament and finishing with a 9-13 record, former head coach Rodney Cox and assistant Rhonda Cox decided to retire.<\/p>\n

Now, first-year head coach Ed Aiken and assistant Ben Lykins \u2013 whose name is a familiar one around the San Juan Basin League \u2013 will look to mold a young team that lost four seniors and its four top scorers from last season.<\/p>\n

With the big man duo of Ro Paschal and Andrew Plunkett moving on to college, Aiken expects freshman Caden Showalter to hold things down in the paint.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s kind of our big man right now,\u201d Aiken said. \u201cHe\u2019s about 6-3 and has good size and a strong base. He\u2019s been our force inside so far in the early stage of this season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophomore Hunter Hoover will also play a part in the inside game, and while the Jays don\u2019t have a ton of size, Aiken says they have good speed and hopes to use it to their advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, I\u2019m placing an emphasis on control and a controlled tempo,\u201d he explained. \u201cAnd we\u2019re probably playing more conservative now in practice than I hope. I hope to get us to a more accelerated pace. It\u2019s going to be a learning process, but I\u2019d like to turn us into a more aggressive, running-style team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juniors Caleb Yoder and Jake McKie will be the team\u2019s primary ballhandlers in the backcourt, and Aiken expects fellow juniors Zane Wilson and Nic and Griff Huver to be key contributors, citing the twins\u2019 defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be looking to them for a defensive presence,\u201d he said. \u201cThey bring a little more grit and toughness to our young team.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a big roster turnover and as a first-year head coach, Aiken expects his team to be underestimated this season. And while he anticipates Ignacio and Telluride to be two of the frontrunners in the San Juan Basin League, he said that the team\u2019s goal this year is to take care of the basketball and be as competitive as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of a broader objective about winning districts or whatever, I haven\u2019t really thought about that or gotten that far,\u201d he explained. \u201cI want to get them to a place where we can play competitively with some of these older teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jays are scheduled to open the 2016-17 season at the Rehoboth Tournament in Gallup, New Mexico, beginning Thursday, Dec. 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

begin 2016-17 season with new coach, young team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-71220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71220","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=71220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71220"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=71220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}