South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

Lindbergh boys’ basketball team starts 2011-’12 season with win over MICDS

By ROBERT CHALUPNY

For the Call

The Lindbergh High School boys’ basketball team rebounded nicely from a heart-heavy loss to Vianney in the semifinals last year to start the 2011-2012 season with a 49-44 win over MICDS last week.

Jason Wolfard, who is entering his sixth year as the Flyers head coach, told the Call he was pleased with the win and credited his team’s defensive effort in the contest. 

“We came out and we did real good defensively in the first half,” he said. “They only made four field goals in the first half, which was really good for us and we executed really well, too.

“We were up 10 or 11 at halftime (and) 15 at the end of the third quarter. I think we were up like 13 with less than two minutes left and it was a two-point game with three seconds left,” Wolfard said. “So they made a little comeback on us. So we’ve got to learn how to just finish games out, but on the road at their place, it’s tough. Us pulling out a win was really good, really important for our guys.”

Wolfard said that this season the expectations are very high, which is typical for the Flyers.

“We want to compete for everything that we can,” he said. “We want to put ourselves in position to compete for championships — whether it be a tournament championship, a conference championship or a district championship or further. We just want to get better ever day. We’ve got a lot of seniors back that know what we are doing.”

Point guards are Blake Welch and Joe Killian. Wolfard certainly will be looking to them for leadership this season as well as Cameron McGuire, Mike Ebert and Nick Deloch, who also are returning.

“They will kind of be the go-to guys. Our point guards have played with us for four years and have started for three, so the expectations are pretty high around here,” Wolfard said. “We’re not at the top of everyone’s list, but we just make sure that we are ready to go. It might surprise some people and catch some people off guard.”

One of the strengths the Flyers have on their side is their athleticism in all positions, according to Wolfard, who also cited the team’s work ethic as one of the best he has seen in his tenure.

“I think our strength is our athleticism. We are pretty athletic in all positions,” he said. “Any guy could score at any time. You really can’t focus on just one guy. They’re really good, they share the ball. They play together well. They feed off each other well.

“One thing about this group more than any other group I’ve ever coached, I never have to get after them about their effort,” Wolfard said. “They always give 100 percent all the time. That’s one thing that we as coaches love. We can focus on tweaking things basketballwise. For them to be like that, they are very competitive with each other. It’s an advantage to us”

The biggest obstacle the Flyers will face this season is their size.

“We will be undersized most games,” he said, noting Lindbergh’s tallest player is 6 foot, 5 inches. Against taller players, “we might run into some issues, but hopefully we can overcome that with our athleticism,” the Lindbergh head coach said.

The Flyers won the Hillsboro Tournament last year and were set to take on Northwest in the first game of the tournament to defend their title Tuesday night — after the Call went to press.

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