2 hours Ago By By Denny Weller Special to The Free Press
Senior forward Riley Johnson enjoyed a productive season on Mankato West’s junior varsity basketball team last year. Now, Johnson will look to transform his aggressive style of play to this season’s depleted varsity team. With their best player and lone returnee — 6-foot-6 senior wing Kyle Steinke — sidelined until after the first of the year with a knee injury, the Scarlets will have to lean on a bevy of newcomers to fill the void from last year’s 20-8 season.
Steinke averaged 16.3 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, while Johnson and fellow senior Max Vilt helped the JV put together a 15-11 mark.
“We got the same squad as last year so we’re just trying to step up to the next level with good chemistry,” Johnson said. “We were pretty good last year so I actually have a lot of confidence going into this season, even though we may have some doubters. We had some success on the JV and we’ve improved with a lot of open gym over the summer.
“My shooting has really excelled over the summer. I am going to have to play more big this year so I can both stretch and play the post. I feel I can do a little bit of everything in that I can dribble, shoot, rebound and pass.
Passing is the best aspect of my game. I have good vision and I love making plays on the court. Personally, I am going to have to work on my ball-handling.
” While Johnson and his teammates don’t have much experience at the varsity level, West coach Jeremy Drexler likes what he’s seen so far. “Riley is a high energy guy who plays real hard who is also a good leader,” Drexler said. “He’s going to have to play some big minutes this year for us to be successful.
He’s a slasher who is very active in getting deflections and rebounds. He loves to distribute the ball so he’s going to have to be one of our stronger players so we’re going to expect a lot out of him. He’s a high quality kid who is very polite and respected.
” West, which finished 20-8 a year ago, will look to Vilt and junior Ryan Hendrickson to provide some offensive punch. Two more seniors — Chase Lindeman and Evan Hartman — will also be in the rotation as will juniors Colton Franklin, Evan Zika, Gus Schweim and Abe Carson, along with sophomore Logan McCollum. “We’re early in so we’ll see what the next few weeks bring,” Drexler said.
“It’s going to be a fun year. We’re starting all over with a lot of players vying for time. We’ll start out with the seniors and hopefully they’ll find their way until we can fill in around those guys.
I think this group will play very hard and we’ve got a few guys who can shoot it. If we can move the ball and get those guys some open looks we can be pretty successful. “We’re going to have to defend very well in order to have as much success as we want.
We’re going to stress team defense the first few weeks so we can get things accomplished on that end of the floor. We just got to have guys know their roles, knowing what they do well so they can look for that on the floor all the time.” West opens its season Tuesday at Faribault.
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