As the winter season begins, along with notable sports like wrestling and cheerleading, one of those upcoming sports is the 2024-2025 MSHS boys basketball season. On Oct. 28, the voluntary open gym started on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:15 pm to 7:30 pm after school. The first official day of tryouts is Nov. 18, and the first game of this season is on Nov. 30, away versus Mesa Ridge High School.

This season will be Nick Nunley’s first year as a head coach for the team, as the head coaches last season were Brian Vecchio and Ken Vecchio. Both no longer coach for the team due to Brian Vecchio going to Sierra High School to be the athletic director. Ken Vecchio still comes around for open gyms, but he is not on staff. The assistant coaches for this year are Scott Turek for JV and Sam Duff for the C team.

The team members, coached by Nick Nunley, have been training through preseason to improve for the upcoming season.

This year’s team captains haven’t been finalized, but Cohen Barrett (11) and Preston Rhodes (12) are being considered for the position. 

Barrett has his own personal goals for the boys basketball team. “I definitely want to have a winning season,” Barrett said. “I want to make it to the playoffs.” 

This year’s teams look much bigger with the addition of new players. Nunley believes the increased number of players during open gyms has had a positive impact. “This year especially, I think we have a lot of good freshmen coming in, and I think it’ll push a lot of our older kids to just play better,” Nunley said, “because at the end of the day in my program, what I want is just competition across the board, and I think the new guys will bring in that.” 

Rhodes believes that with the new addition of new players coming in, there is a lot of excitement for the future of the team. “I’m definitely excited. We had a ton of people at open gyms,” Rhodes said, “it will definitely be good to have a deep bench and get a lot more kids on the floor.” 

Nunley has goals for the team this season.  “I think just communication and cohesiveness as long as everybody’s on the same page, everybody knows their roles. I think it would be really successful,” he said.

Nunley isn’t sure how the season will end, but he’s focused on building a strong team. “We’ll see how good we’re going to be,” Nunley said, “but ultimately, the goal should always be to win the state championship, and I think as long as that’s in the background we can work very hard to achieve it.”