Wildcats must work to build depth this season

HARTINGTON — There is plenty of talent on hand for Nick Haselhorst’s ninth year at the helm of the Hartington-Newcastle Wildcats basketball team.

That can only mean a potential improvement from last year’s 13-10 squad that fell to eventual D1 state champs Laurel-Concord-Coleridge in the SubDistrict finals.

Could that mean the team could challenge for the best year under Haselhorst – which currently stands at 17-6 in 2014-15? Time will tell.

“The strengths of our team will be our collective speed and quickness,” Haselhorst said. “We’ve got some guys that are going to be great defenders due to their ability to move forward laterally and can really be disruptive defensively.”

Height will be a problem this year, though, he said.

“The weaknesses of our team will be our overall height and varsity experience level. We graduated five seniors, with two of them being all-conference players and four-year starters for our program. The other graduates were key contributors and starters for multiple years.”

Only four letter winners are back, but three of them have plenty of starting or playing experience including Isaac Bruning, Kobe Heitman and Jake Peitz, while a number of underclassmen should make up more than just the roster numbers despite the obvious challenges in 2020.

“We are pretty confident even though we lost experience from last year,” Bruning said. “We are working hard and hopefully we will make it to state this year. We are showing a lot of progress. We had a lot of tournaments planned during the summer but a lot of them got cancelled – you just had to live with it.”

“I feel you lose some momentum toward your season. We ended last year, and we skipped a part of your game that you were supposed to make. You are playing this season right off of last season.”

The hope is they can catch their play up to their intent as the schedule will not be forgiving.

“The competition level we play this year will certainly be a challenge,” Haselhorst said. “We play perennial powers in each of our first four games of the season, against Ponca, Osmond, Humphrey St. Francis, and Pierce. It will certainly be a challenge, but we view it as an opportunity, if we can find ways to win, to assert ourselves in the discussion as a team to be reckoned with.”

Haselhorst said the Cats are purposely putting together a tough schedule.

“We want to play the best teams in the area we can in order to prepare us to be playing our best basketball in late January and February,” he said.

The team will have to figure out how to defeat the defending state champion Bears if they want to make a trip to the Elite Eight. “LCC figures to be a tal

“LCC figures to be a talented team this year and ultimately we will have to get through them again in our conference and our SubDistrict in order to get to where we want to go,” Haselhorst said.

To do that, the defense will be a priority.

“Defensively, we want to play with intensity and apply waves of pressure to the opposing team’s guards,” Haselhorst said. “We are going to have to commit to being physical and scrappy. Offensively, we must be able to facilitate shots for other team members and knock down open shots when we have the opportunities to do so. If we can gain confidence in our abilities defensively, I would expect the confidence on the offensive side to grow as well.”

The one thing Bruning is concerned about is seeing the team lose momentum becomes of the virus.

“I am very worried,” he said. “A lot of schools have been shutting down and it’s crazy how it could all go away in a couple weeks. You’ve got to try to turn the negatives into positives. That’s all you can do.”

Haselhorst is optimistic that 2020-21 can still go off without too many hitches.

“I feel like we can play a full season uninterrupted with postponements or cancellations,” he said. “As competitors we just want the opportunity to compete and do the best we can with the opportunities we are given. It’s going to require our adults and kids and kids and adults from other towns to remain consistent and disciplined with their out of school habits.”

“Volleyball and football teams made it through their seasons successfully and I expect the same from the winter season sports.”

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