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New coach leads inexperienced Comets
(by Tony Lange - November 23, 2011)
New coach leads inexperienced Comets
By TONY LANGE
The Solon boys basketball team will piece together its talent with new players and new coaches this season.
After graduating seven seniors from last year's team, the Comets will have to adapt quickly to playing varsity ball, new head coach Bob Patton said.
"The talent level isn't an issue. We're just really inexperienced," said Patton, who coached the Westlake basketball team last season and also was the head coach at Kenston from 2002-2007. "It's just trying to put together a lot of new things offensively, defensively with a new staff coming in."
Previous head coach Sean Fisher resigned following last season. He had a 37-51 record during his four-year tenure at Solon. Last season, the Comets finished at 9-14 after losing 68-66 to Brush in the early postseason.
While the Comets have several seniors on their 2011-12 squad, the only player with significant game experience is 6-2 guard Nate Brillhart, Patton said.
"A couple guys got some minutes but nothing of any kind of substance," he said. "They kind of got some minutes here and there, but not what I would call meaningful minutes where they were in the game when the game was on the line and the game mattered."
Last year, the Comets had a 15-player varsity roster that included six juniors along with Brillhart: Stephon Fields, Emmitt Mosley, Kareem Oldham, Denzell Davis, A.J. Johnson and Patrick Kramer. Then freshman Nyaires Redding was the only underclassman on varsity.
This season, the Comets will bunch together a balanced mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors, Patton said.
"I've been a coach for a few years and I usually know when we're going to be pretty good, but it's difficult to put a gauge on how we're going to be this preseason," he said. "We have a lot of guys coming in trying to understand what we as coaches are trying to do at both ends of the court. Hopefully we can just keep getting better each day and go from there."
During Patton's tenure with Kenston, the Bombers were members of the old Western Reserve Conference, which included many of the teams in Solon's current Northeast Ohio Conference.
A lot of the coaches Patton will face this year are the same ones he faced while at Kenston, he said.
"Obviously we'll scout, but familiarity with other teams and the systems they run isn't an issue," Patton said. "I'm always more worried about what we do than what everybody else does. I know our guys are ready to get going and I know our coaching staff is ready to get going, so yeah, we're all excited for the season to get under way."
The Comets tip off their season against Mayfield at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 9, at home.
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