CALIFORNIA - The 21-4 Pintos varsity basketball team had one more time to shine. Along with the junior varsity and the freshmen team, a total of 25 players were recognized Thursday night at California High School for their efforts and achievements during the 2014-15 basketball season. JV finished the season with a 12-4 record and the freshmen posted an 8-7 record.
"It was a great year," said Califronia coach Blair Scanlon. "To go 21-4, co-conference champs, win two tournaments, win our tournament in back-to-back years, they really overachieved this year. It was a great group, a blue-collar group. They played within team concept and played their roles to a "T'. I couldn't ask for more from them."
The Pintos graduate nine seniors, returning two juniors and six sophomores. They also must replace Tri County Conference MVP, Jaden Barr.
"It means a lot," Barr said on winning the award. "There are a lot of really good players in the conference. Our conference is very good at basketball. Every team has really good players and good guards especially, so for me to win that, for people to think I was the best player in the conference, that means a lot."
Drew Norton was also named second team All-Conference and Damon Shaw and Landon Mouse were All-Conference honorable mention. Scanlon was tabbed as Conference Coach of the Year.
"It's an award," said Scanlon. "I don't really care. I mean, it's nice to get recognized, but I was more happy about our guys getting post-seaosn honors. ... MVP of the conference is pretty tough. To even get All-Conference honors is a good thing. It's a tough basketball league. A lot of good teams, a lot of good coaches."
California started the season hot, winning its first 13 games to open the season. They suffered its first lost on Jan. 24 to Conway. The Pintos went on to drop a second round matchup with Fulton in the Southern Boone Tournament - but won the third place game - and lost a game on the road to Blair Oaks to force the two teams to share the conference title crown. Their final loss came to South Callaway in the semifinals of the district tournament.
"It hurt," said Scanlon. "The losses we had were to legit teams. Two of them were probably in games we played really good in, the other ones were games where teams just got hot on us. The loss that hurts the most was to Blair Oaks for conference outright."
The Pintos did win their tournament and the Linn Invitational Tournament, which Scanlon says hasn't happened in 20-25 years.
"We had a great year," said Barr. "We kind of exceeded expectations, you know, we had a lot of guys that never really had varsity experience and we come out and we ended up going 21-4 and surprised a lot of people. We lost earlier than we would have liked to in districts, but that's just how basketball goes some times. ... We were happy with our season and we feel like we over-accomplished what people thought we would."
Mouse and Ethan Hodges are the two juniors returning. They will be asked to lead a very young team with little varsity experience.
"Getting in work, open guys, camps, personal workouts, we just have to get in the gym and get better," Scanlon said when asked how he'll replace the nine seniors.
"We have a lot of kids that haven't played a lot of basketball and aren't really experience. We'll be young, we're going to make some mistakes, we'll have some ups and downs, but by the end of the year, we'll be as good as anybody. It's going to be a challenge. I'll get frustrated at times, but I think it's going to be kind of a fun year. I like the challenge."