SAUGUS — For Saugus girls basketball coach Mark Schruender, the bench can be an overlooked part of a high school basketball team.
While the Sachems are led by three senior captains (Fallon Millerick, Cassandra Israelson and April Aldred) who have been playing basketball for seven years, Schruender believes that the players who are seventh through 12th on the rotation play a crucial role as well.
“If you look at a community’s three through six best players, in general, I find those to be pretty close to equal,” the head coach said. “The first and second-best players, sometimes those stand out — especially the first. If one school has a kid that’s a college basketball player, that’s going to stand out. I think something that gets overlooked is seventh through 12th. How much are you getting from those kids, because those are the kids who are going to make your practices better. When you get to a game, those kids can have an impact. If they are better than your opponent’s seventh through 12th players, that’s going to make the difference and I think it’s something that gets ignored by people who don’t do this day in and day out. Maybe because their contributions aren’t as visible, but those seventh through 12th players are key and I think with the team we have this year, we have really good depth in that part of the roster.”
While it’s early in the season, Schruender said that practices are going well and he is encouraged by the performance of the team.
“We’ve had pretty good energy in the gym and we have been doing a lot of conditioning,” he said. “So for the kids to still have a lot of energy after conditioning is really encouraging.”
With a lot of teams in the Northeastern Conference playing an up-tempo style of basketball, Schruender is reminding his players that all of the conditioning work in the preseason is done for a reason.
“We are doing this not as a penalty to you guys, but we are doing this because our opponents are doing this too so we want to do it 5 percent better than our opponents,” said Schruender. “It’s painful obviously, nobody likes the feeling immediately after you’ve done a bunch of sprints or plyometric exercises or whatever it happens to be, but I think the kids understand the payoff.”
The Sachems head coach also said that this year, there isn’t one player who will dominate the stat sheet game in and game out for Saugus. Schruender is really impressed with the depth of his squad.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be one player that necessarily leads us in scoring from game to game, he said. “I think there’s a variety of kids that can put the ball in the basket and likewise when you talk about roles, I think we have multiple kids that can bring the ball up the court and facilitate the offense. We also have multiple kids that can rebound the basketball.”
The depth will also help Saugus stay fresh throughout the season.
“If we are going to be an up-tempo style team we are going to need to make substitutions a lot because we are going to be running a lot back and forth,” said Schruender. “I feel really confident that regardless of who is in to start the game and who comes off the bench, that player will be able to deliver for us.”
Saugus opens its season on the road as they take on Triton Dec. 15 (7). The Sachems’ home opener won’t come until a week later on Dec. 22 against rival Peabody.
