(Oakland) 96.5 KSOM will have the broadcast of Riverside’s season opener in basketball. The Bulldogs host AHSTW on Tuesday. A live video stream can found HERE
The Riverside boys won seven of their last ten regular season games a year ago. They are thinking big this season. Coach Nick Kroon comments on the expectations, “To make a deep playoff run.” Kroon adds, “I think we’ve got some key pieces that really feel it’s going to happen. That’s pretty cool when you are around a bunch of kids that really believe that it’s going to go that well.”
Most of the starting lineup and production return. Grady Jeppesen led the team last year at 18.9 points per game. “We have Grady and we have both Aiden Bell and Ayden Salais. We have Mason (McCready) and Jon (Alff) all coming back. You’re going to see increased minutes for Kyler Rieken. Right now we are about six deep. When Grady gets back we are going to push to be 7 or 8 deep. We have a number of guys competing with DJ Bramman, Keaton Rieken, Garrett Hough, and Teegan Schechinger.”
Due to an injury, Jeppesen is not expected to make his debut until midway through the season. Coach Kroon adds Dawson Henderson and Brody Henderson have been a couple of freshmen looking good in practice and had a good summer.
Coach Kroon expects AHSTW to provide a stiff test. “They’ll still be pretty special. They lost one superstar from their team, but they have a lot of nice pieces. They have a lot of nice athletes. We played them this summer and it was a pretty tight game, but they are tough to score on. They are pretty pesky defensively. I envision they’ll be right back up at the top of the WIC Conference. I think there will be a number of teams that can vie for that.”
Riverside won 12 games last year. It marked the first time since 2012 and 2013 that they had a double digit win total in back-to-back years.
Riverside coach Nick Kroon:
