(Neola) High School sports resume their competition schedule on Tuesday. Tri-Center’s matchup at Riverside will air on KSOM with video HERE
The Trojan boys have come out on top in five of their eight games this season. Coach Chad Harder is expecting a competitive game against Riverside. “It’s going to be a tough matchup. Coach (Nick) Kroon, in my opinion, is one of the best coaches around and a really good friend of mine too. They’ve got a really good team. When the (Grady) Jeppesen kid is healthy he’s one of the best players around. (Aiden) Bell and (Ayden) Salais really make them go. Those three alone make it a really, really tough matchup, because you can’t just focus on one. At the same time we know they are going to have a good scheme. Their record is deceiving because they haven’t been healthy. It’s going to be a battle against two teams I think are probably pretty equal.”
Tri-Center is turning in another strong season despite losing a couple of key pieces to graduation. Senior Michael Turner leads the group at 18.6 points 5.1 assists, and 3.0 steals per game. “Michael kind of does it at all three levels. He’s really good in transition. He’s good around the rim. He hasn’t shot the three as well as he’s capable of, but we think he’ll come around. He gets downhill and he’s one of those athletes that is just tough to stop. That’s why he’s such a good football player. He just makes us go. He makes everybody better on the floor. Michael is just a kid that just knows how to play basketball.”
Coach Harder says the team concentrated on defense during the holiday break. “Defensively we have to be better. That’s been our main focus. I thought we might struggle scoring early, but it’s kind of been the opposite. We’ve struggled stopping people. We need to protect the lane better. We need to make sure we find shooters better. I just think we can be better defensively.” Harder says, “If we can clean that stuff up defensively I think we can be in every game the rest of the way.”
These two teams split their head-to-head meetings last year. Both games were decided by five points or less.
Tri-Center coach Chad Harder:
