With surrounding the NBA lockout, it’s refreshing to know Wildcat Basketball is right around the corner. The University High School Boys Basketball Team, coming off its 4th consecutive appearance in the CIF Division Two Finals, is back in hopes of raising a crown. However, the situation is a whole lot different this year as the team has moved up to the highly competitive Division 1 as a reward for their stellar performance in the past couple years.
The Uni High Basketball Team is no new face to Division One teams such as Westchester, Fairfax, and Palisades as they compete with them face-to-face during the regular season. But the perennial powerhouses they’ll have to face (Taft 29-3, Centennial 30-5, and Crenshaw 19-9) once they make the playoffs will be a different story.
Last year’s team, an experienced squad, brought a tremendous amount of excitement in the final year of the West Gym. But high school is not the NBA and all good things come to an end; the 2011-2012 Wildcat Team will be without 9 veterans from last year, 8 graduated and 1 transferred. The void left by David Nwaba, who led the Wildcats to a school-record of 25 victories, will be the hardest to fill.
Coach Steve Ackerman, the mastermind behind the Wildcats’ success for the past several years, has high hopes for the new team.
“This team might take a bit longer to gel due to the fact that we’re a younger, less experienced varsity team,” states Coach Ackerman, “But we’ll ultimately be a very good team. Our promotion to Division 1 might make the path to a championship harder, but nonetheless it’s going to be an exciting year with the newest gymnasium in the city. The players are very excited.”
The team worked on their chemistry together during the summer in an outside league. These players are not completely unfamiliar with each other’s game.
We might not be as good as last year’s team but we definitely have the potential. Veteran player Daquan Owens says, “If we work hard in practice we’ll be fine. All we really lack is experience.”
This year’s team is without a doubt a playoff caliber team but in order to become a championship team, patience will be the key. Captain Joshua Proctor says, “I felt bad that we lost almost the entire team from last year, but at the same time I feel good that we have a fresh new set of players to work with. This is a good team, we just need to take it slow and take one step at a time.” The gap left by departed players, provides an opportunity for the younger generation to step up.