English boys hoop hopes to get past inexperience

With a young squad this season, the English High boys basketball team is looking to get the roster ironed out over the course of the next two weeks.Click here for a photo gallery.”We want to bring them together as a team,” head coach Buzzy Barton said on Monday, after the first day of practice for winter sports teams. “They haven’t played too much together. We want to get the kids used to each other, get them to jell.”The Bulldogs do have several experienced players returning from last year’s team, which reached the MIAA Division 1 North semifinals. Senior co-captains Travonne Berry-Rogers and Paradise Hogan are both guards, as is Josh Castillo. Junior Keandre Stanton, who stands at about 6-6, is a center.”(Berry-Rogers) goes to the basket well,” Barton said. “He shoots good from the outside. He’s definitely a leader.”This will be both captains’ fourth year playing for Barton. Berry-Rogers also served as a captain in football this fall. Barton also used a football metaphor to describe Hogan’s role on the court this year.”He’ll be quarterbacking the team, playing the point,” Barton said. “He’ll run our offense.”Stanton, the coach said, “blocks a lot of shots. He changes the game. He makes teams alter shots. On offense, he’s very aggressive going to the basket.”Berry-Rogers, Hogan, Stanton and Castillo were four of the 80 players who showed up for practice yesterday. Barton said that probably half of the total were older players.”We’ll definitely be a young, inexperienced team,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”Last year, English faced scrutiny over the issue of player transfers; however, the MIAA rescinded a 10-game suspension for Barton this year. Barton said that once this year’s suspension was taken away, he viewed things as having turned the corner from last year.This year, the Bulldogs’ campaign starts with the Benedetto Jamboree on Dec. 11 and the regular-season opener at Beverly on Dec. 14. Barton said that one role of the jamboree can be to give players the experience of performing in front of a crowd.”You’ve got to get first-game jitters out of there,” he said. “Kids get butterflies in their first game in front of a crowd.”Barton said that because of his young squad this season, he might have to do a bit of tweaking on defense, a traditional Bulldog staple.”Our defenses had a lot of speed,” he said. “We ran at teams. I don’t know how deep we’ll be (this year). To do a lot of pressing, you need a lot of kids. When you don’t have talent, you don’t have talent. Our style might change a bit.”Nevertheless, the coach remained hopeful that this year’s team would be strong on defense.”It’s what we always stress at English,” he said. “When we pick the team, we’ll start working kids out and work with defense. We do a lot of pressing – we consider it a specialty.” He added that the team also likes to trap.This is Barton’s fifth year as head boys coach at English. He is a 1971 graduate of the school and played center for the Bulldogs, for whom he was a captain. He contrasted basketball then with the way it is played now.”There was no three-point line,” he said, “and no glass backboards. There were wooden boards. It’s an uptempo game now.”Rounding out the coaching staff for Barton are Mike Carr (first assistant), Ronnie Young (JV team) and Jimmy Tidmarsh (freshman team).