Elkins’ potential was on display in the early part of last season, when it won its first tournament championship in two years at the Corpus Christi Calallen tourney.
Elkin's Kenny Bangmora, right, and the Knights open the season on Nov. 17 at home against Kingwood. Photo by Pin Lim/For the Chronicle
But that potential wasn’t fully realized until after a tough district run in which the Knights scraped into the playoffs as the fourth seed. Once there, they shocked the area with a run to the regional semifinals.
“We did maximize the talent it just took us some time to get where we were because there was some inexperience there,” Elkins coach Albert Thomas said. “The guys just happened to jell at the right time, when they needed to.
“It was a constant feeling-out process and they finally decided they were going to do what they needed to do to get into the playoffs and they just kept playing that way, and we kept going further and further.”
Thomas hopes to keep it going this season, and the Knights will start with more experience thanks to their first trip to the fourth round of the playoffs.
Along the way they upset District 24-5A champion Ball, ousted North Shore and shocked Bush, which was the district runner-up to Hightower last season.
It finally took then-Class 5A No. 1 Strake Jesuit to knock them out.
“It was fantastic for that group of guys to be able to do that because really basically no one expected them to go that far,” Thomas said.
“We had some talent-laden teams before and this one didn’t have the name recognition that those others had, and so for them to go further than some of those other teams was definitely a feather in that group’s cap.”
While that group mostly is back, there are two key cogs gone: Miles Dixon and Nick Harwell. Dixon was the team’s leading scorer and hit several clutch baskets when the Knights needed them most.
“(Dixon) was big because he was a proven scorer, and he had a lot of experience,” Thomas said. “But we’ll miss Nick Harwell, too, because he had three years of varsity experience, so those two guys gave us a lot of experience and leadership at the guard spot.
“We’ll have to have some guys step up and assume those roles.”
The leading candidates are the two returning senior starters from a group of eight players back: hard-nosed shooting guard Mark Cannon and multi-talented forward Gevon Jackson.
They’ll have help from senior point guard Aaron Harwell, who also saw plenty of playing time last season.
“They definitely will have to elevate their game, and they have big-time game experience because all three of those guys played a lot all year long and also in the playoffs, so we’ll lean on them to provide us with some type of direction,” Thomas said.
Harwell was the backup PG last season. Thomas says he’s more than ready to take over the starting reigns, though the team won’t depend on any one person as much as they did on Dixon.
“He played quite a bit last year and he’s been groomed to do that throughout his career, so he’ll be able to assume that role,” Thomas said. “And with our team we have more guards than anything else, so it won’t fall on one guy to do everything.”
Also returning are junior G/F Deric Dudley, senior G/F Hollis Robinson, senior F Torian Coleman and senior F Will Rogers, who was moved up from the JV in time to see minutes in the playoffs.
Rogers and Coleman will be the Knights’ primary presence in the post, but they’ll mainly man that area on defense. The team will rely more on its quickness and shooting than its halfcourt game on offense.
Thomas expects the top newcomer to be junior backup PG Kenny Bangmora, a solid guard off a JV team that went 26-2 and won a district title.
With so many players either new to the varsity team or their roles, the Knights spent the offseason and practice before the opener next week working on fitting everybody together.
“We’ve been focusing on team chemistry because some of the guys coming back didn’t play very much, so we’re trying to get our chemistry down with a new group of guys out there playing together,” Thomas said.
Elkins, which will be in a zone with Fort Bend Austin, Travis, Clements and Fort Bend Marshall, opens the season at 7 p.m. on Nov. 17 at home against Kingwood.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Thomas said. “I think we’re going to be good, but the district is so good you can be good but not good enough. So we’ll just play the wait-and-see game and play every game hard.
“I tell them: ‘I think we can win every game but we can lose every game, too.’”