The Wright City boys basketball team is going through the growing pains early on in their season with a 0-3 record and a recent 60-27 loss to St. Charles West on Dec. 3. However, Head Coach Ken Brown noted this is intentional.

“It’s going to make us better. Once we play our conference teams, this game’s going to be easy for us,” Brown said. “I like playing tough teams early on. It lets us know what we need to work on, let’s just get prepared for the season and those next couple of games we play, those games will be better for us.”

Going against tougher teams has allowed Brown to see what the Wildcats need to work on. So far, the biggest struggle has been taking care of the ball and finding the net.

Brown went on to say part of this struggle is due to having a pretty new team after they lost seven seniors.

“It’s not an excuse, but we got to get better at it and we will be better next time we play,” Brown said. “I have a lot of players that don’t have a lot of experience because they were [junior varsity] players last year, but we’ll be okay in the long run.”

While the first three games have allowed Brown to see what the team needs improvement in, it has also allowed him to see spots of growth as he touted the defense for their performance against the Warriors.

He noted as the game went on they were able to figure out the pressure but in the second half the Warriors were able to find more shots.

“I think we kind of figured out the pressure. We have really quick guards and my post pairs are phenomenal when they get the chance to get the ball down low. We just got to be able to get our shots to flow,” Brown said.

As the season goes on, Brown wants to see less turnovers and an improvement in rebounding.

“I think our challenge is going to be trying to keep the turnovers under 10 or under 12, so that way we have more flow in our offense. I feel like if we do a
better job of doing that, we’ll do fine,” Brown said.

Despite the loss, Brown said there is not too much to dwell on and they have to be ready to go for their next game.

“We got a lot of kids that kind of wear their hearts on their sleeves, but we need to settle down and relax,” Brown said. “Overall, I’m pleased with the effort. The effort was always there tonight.”

Since playing St. Charles West, the Wildcats recorded their first win the next day in a 48-42 contest against Missouri Military Academy. 

Wright City will play next at home on Dec. 10 in their first EMO conference game against Bowling Green at 7p.m.