Published: November 17, 2009 11:31 am      

Leopards start hoop season tonight

By DARIN ALLRED

Register Sports Editor



The injury bug that bit the Gainesville Leopards football team during the second half of their season has also taken a bite out of the Leopard basketball program as the team gets ready to start the 2009-10 season tonight.

The Leopards will travel to Lucas Lovejoy to begin the season, but they will do it without two of their best players and a host of others who are still recovering from injuries.

In all, six players who are on or were expected to be on the GHS varsity right now were injured during football season. The most glaring injury was to senior Deshawn Franklin, who tore his ACL on a muddy football field and is lost for the season.

For Gainesville head coach Eric Johns, watching his basketball players go down to injuries in football season was tough.

“I’ve always loved football and I’ve always coached it, but it’s something that is always in the back of my mind and I always worry about it a little bit,” he said. “When you play on a sloppy field like the one we had when Deshawn got hurt, things happen. My heart just sunk because I knew what had happened. After that it just seemed to keep rolling downhill and I’m watching person after person go down. I was thinking, this can’t be happening. It was unreal.”

After Franklin went down, Harold Wills, Kielyn Lewis, Cody Welch, Kenyon Morgan and Dakota Nichols all suffered injuries near the end of the season. Wills, an All-District selection a year ago, cracked a bone in his hand. Lewis suffered a concussion and has not yet been cleared to play.

Wills started practicing with the team Friday and should be set to start tonight. Lewis will not see action tonight.

“He (Wills) isn’t 100 percent yet,” Johns stated. “He is still tentative, but his legs work so he is going to be able to go. Kielyn is not with us yet. He is still having some dizziness problems and if everything goes as plans he might be back by this Friday or it might be next week.”

Welch, Morgan and Nichols have been in practice the entire time and should be good to go.

The Leopards also lost some strong senior leadership from last year along with their tallest players. So who will step up and be the leader this year?

I’m not sure,” Johns shrugged and said. “The tough thing right now is the Deshawn thing because he was a two-year starter and was unanimous first team All-District for two years. He is the toughest to replace because we built the team around him. I hate it for him and I hate it for us.

“Right now we are trying to find point guards and big men,” the coach added. “We’re all six-footers. Six-two is about as tall as we get and there’s not many of us. We have some guys that were guards last year that are going to have to play inside for us. As far as point guards, Cody Welch has taken the job right now and I’ve got a couple of freshmen that I’m going to put on the varsity, which is something that I haven’t done in 16 years of coaching. Ability-wise, I think they can handle it and help us.”

Gainesville will play a tough non-district schedule that includes games against Lovejoy, Whitewright, Denton Ryan, Nevada Community, Nocona, Richardson Pearce, Vernon, Iowa Park, Wichita Falls Hirschi, Decatur and Van Alstyne.

So what sort of things will the Leopards try to accomplish in their non-district schedule?

“When I put this schedule together, I thought I was going to have Deshawn and Harold, two returning All-District players, and it was going to be more of a ‘let’s get ready to make the playoffs’ non-district schedule,” Coach Johns said. “Now it’s become a ‘let’s evaluate and see where we are, get these guys adjusted to me and get them used to playing at this level.’ Our goal is still to make the playoffs. That hasn’t changed. We’re practicing with the lights on and trying to score more points than the other team. That’s not near as important right now as our progress, individually and as a team.”

When the calendar turns to 2010 and District 9-3A play rolls around, the Leopards will once again find strong teams, led by Argyle and Prosper.

“When we did district votes, I voted Prosper and Argyle the top two teams and I voted us third, followed by Sanger, Whitesboro and Celina,” Johns said. “That ended up being the general consensus in the district. Some of the coaches have changed their mind in the last couple of weeks. Prosper, Argyle and Sanger have all three had their full teams in the gym all fall so we kind of start behind the eight ball a little bit trying to catch up with them. Athletically, we are right there will all of them. They are ahead of us basketball-wise in a lot of ways, but if the kids work the way I think they will, then we can catch up with them.”

Gainesville will start the year with three teams: varsity, junior varsity and freshman. Right now there are 33 players in the program, only one of which is a sophomore. Johns says they will try to keep three teams throughout the year if they can keep players injury-free and academically eligible.