Two practices were enough for new Mingus Union High School head coach Dave Beery to introduce 15 of his varsity and junior varsity basketball players to Camp Verde High School with road scrimmage wins June 10.
Although they could only muster 13 points at halftime, the Marauders varsity adjusted to score over 30 points in the next 20 minutes to beat head coach Dan Wall’s varsity by eight points, while the MUHS junior varsity handled the Cowboys easily in round-robin tournament action at CVHS.
“Our JV team really dominated,” Beery said. “You get up big, you can kind of get sloppy, but I didn’t really see a lot of that. Camp Verde didn’t have that many kids, but we played hard the whole time.”
It did not help that Beery was only able to run two practices prior to the three scrimmages June 10 — the first organized action for the bulk of the Marauders hoops program under its new coach.
“We went through our offense just a couple of times 10 minutes prior to the first game,” he said. “One of the varsity kids joked at halftime how they averaged 80 points a game last year and only had 13 at the half. We didn’t really execute at all the first half.”
Slowly but steadily, behind a three-guard rotation of juniors Fabian Navarro and Evan Snyder and sophomore Chris D’Angelo, the varsity battled back, tightening its defense in what Beery characterized as a “pretty tightly officiated” first game.
“The officials were consistent,” he said. “I told them at the half, you can either step in front of somebody or let them score.
“It took a few minutes for our kids to make the adjustment — a few more than I wanted at 25.”
For the full story, please see the Wednesday, June 18, issue of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
