 Hello everybody, and welcome to TV8's 2007 and 2008 High School Basketball Coaches Show. My name is Mike Martin. Joining me as usual is Chris Wright, the coach. Chris, we've got an interesting lineup tonight. Who are our coaches? Well, it's very nice that we have all the coaches from Sheboygan here. We're going to have Coach Tom Desatel, who's plus 30 years of coaching, along with Tim Schultz from Sheboygan South. Brett Phlipsy is at Sheboygan Christian. He's coming in and Todd Decker from Sheboygan Lutheran. Now, part of our show, and you're going to have to wait till the end, people, before we do this, but we're going to recap the Fox River Valley and make our predictions for the Fox River Valley and the Central Lakeshore Conference. And then we're also going to talk about some key TV8 matchups, which should be pretty interesting. Yeah, it's hard to believe football's closing up. The college game's going and already on TV, so I'm kind of excited for high school basketball. I don't know about you, but I'm hoping for a lot better success than we had in the football season. It was a long season for football, and we're hoping for a lot better season in basketball. I think we will have a good season, and it's always exciting to, you know, with the new conferences, especially for the Sheboygan North and South, but it'll be a very exciting, just fastball in general. All right, with that, we're going to step out, and when we come back, Chris will be talking with Tim Schultz from Sheboygan South. Welcome back, I'm with Sheboygan South head coach Tim Schultz. Tim, you have a new conference this season. How do you feel about that? Well, definitely the level of play in the conference, I think, is going to go up drastically. Not to say it wasn't bad before, but four teams that we added from the Bay Conference, three of them are, I think, pretty traditionally pretty strong, and a fourth one that, you know, really adds depth that this might be, if you look overall in the conference, might be one of the deepest and most talented conferences now in the state. With this change, you seem to have to play a lot of games on Saturdays. Yeah, it's not the most ideal thing. I would rather stick to the traditional Tuesday-Friday, but, you know, some of those games you throw in there, especially North, North game, which is perfect for Saturday for everyone involved, and Ash Wabanan, I think, is another one. You know, the two really good teams, two really good games. It's not the most ideal thing, breaking up a weekend, but, you know, you play it as the schedule it, I guess. Let's talk about that North-South game for, as you said, forever. It's been, seems like it's been on a Friday or Saturday night. People in Sheboygan have looked forward to this event. The new conference have decided, let's move it to a Tuesday and right away in December. Yeah, I don't think that's the best, but, you know, there's nothing that we can do about it. Next time when they go through the scheduling, I think we'd both, Tom and I, and everyone involved, would rather have both of them on a Saturday, but, set it up for Tuesday, I guess, you know, a new conference, new traditions, new everything, but I'd much rather play on Saturdays. Something I liked about it, too, is, you played the freshman games early in the morning. You had the JV games in the afternoon and then that, it was kind of a, something that, for basketball people in Sheboygan, they're something they always look forward to and you kind of lost that. Right, yeah, you end up, now we're playing the freshman and JV games, the Saturday, for the Tuesday night games, Saturday before, so it does lose a little bit of something where you could kind of hang out all day and watch basketball. That's good, at least that the girls can still play, too. That's a positive thing. Coach, let's talk a little bit about your program. Last couple of years, one thing I've seen is you guys have lost a lot of close games and, you know, it just seems your kids are always right there. You know, what do your kids have to do to get over the top this season? I think it's more mental than anything. I think maybe in the past, you're always kind of hoping you're going to win, thinking you might have a chance to win, instead of just going insane, we are going to win. And a lot of the close games that we lost, there are maybe turnovers or things that we did that might have cost us the game and maybe handed the game to the other team. And I think it's just a learning curve that you go through when you're trying to build up a program. And these guys right now, I think they're at the point that they want to win. They know they can play against other teams. They know they can play against very good teams. We played a lot in the off season against some of the, you know, better programs around the state. And they have a lot of confidence right now. And hopefully, the confidence that they had from the off season carries over into the season. With that, you have a lot of athletes this year. You're just you're a team that could really run up and down the floor. And I think you have a lot of gifted kids over there. Yeah, these guys are, you know, they play multiple sports, a lot of them. And the guys that don't, they're very athletic, very much into basketball. And it gives me a lot of options on who to play, you know, guys get tired, we can burn them out a little bit and get tired, you know, you bring somebody else in, you can get a lot of replaceable parts during the course of a game. The key with that, though, is that, you know, everyone comes in and that they're playing at a high level. Having athletes is great. And you still got to be able to defend, you still got to rebound, still got to put points on the board, you know, and stop the other team from scoring points. But athletes is a nice problem to have. Scoring should be a problem either. You got a lot of points coming back. Yeah, we do, we do have a lot of points. And last year, I think we averaged about 65 points a game. And that's an area I'd like to be your own, if not higher. But again, we have to go back to the defensive end, we got to stop the other teams from scoring. And that's something that I think is a work in progress. We have to be smarter, have to play more on a team concept. And hopefully, what I've seen so far early on, and practice and everything that guys are guys are doing that. Well, you got Hemsingback, Beederwolf, some other kids that can score for you. Do you want to name some of them? Well, Hemsing, Beederwolf, you have TJ crowns, Jake Schwartz, Kyle Rommel. I think those are my five letter winners that are coming back. And all of those guys can put points on the board. And then that's not taken away from some other guys from the JVs as well. But you have to rely on those five letter winners that bring the experience at the varsity level. And some of them, you know, like Beederwolf, he's working on basically his third year of varsity. And those guys have to step up and be leaders, you know, on both ends of the floor. I think you have a nice combination of, like you said, you had a good JV program too last year. And that with those kids you have, I would have high expectations, that's for sure. Ash Wabadon, we know they're going to be real good. And looking at your division playing with the pier and Manitowoc and north and East and Preble, I think it's going to be very competitive. I think it's wide open. I think all of these teams actually, when you look at it athletically in what they bring, size wise, everyone is athletic. Everyone has depth. Styles of play are very similar. And it's one of those things where I think across the board in the conference, not only on our side of the division, but the other side, you're going to have to come to play every single night. There is not a time when you're going to be able to or the players are going to have a chance to sit back and go, Oh, this is going to be an easy one. You know, as coaches, we never do that. It's always a challenge. But it's something that we're going to have to really work the guys in practice and let them know that there is nothing easy coming this way at all in this conference. Well, thanks so much for coming in. We look forward to seeing you. We have you right away on the 30th. So when I return, I'll have coach Todd Decker from Sheboygan. I'm back here with coach Decker from Sheboygan Lutheran. Coach, you've been doing this a long time now. Yes, I have been. It's still enjoyable. And I love what I do. And I like where I'm at and things are going well. So I'm happy to still be part of it. Now, lots of changes have taken place in high school basketball since you first started at Sheboygan North. How have you adapted or some of the things that you've seen since way back in the eighties? Well, I think that the type of player with basketball being almost an all around the year sport that's been a little bit different than when I first started out. I think basketball is a little bit more seasonal. Now, I think to develop a program. Yeah, I try to get these guys in some summer league, some summer tournaments. And I think that's a big difference. I notice that the younger level, there's more kids playing. And that's a good and bad thing, I think. But I just think basketball has become a really big sport and almost all year round sport. And there's some pluses and some minuses. But I think those are some of the things that are a little bit different. I think AAU for youth and things and select sort of teams have kind of contributed to that as well. Right, I think those outside influences have made basketball for high school a little bit different. And being a part of it myself with my family, it is a strong component of basketball nowadays. And sometimes the AAU tag sometimes can hurt a little bit. But it helps the players and it definitely helps the coaches and make basketball a little bit better in Wisconsin throughout all areas. Speaking of your coaches, your staff's been around quite a while and consistency's probably helped your program and helped to be the successful team that it's been. Oh, without a doubt. We've had John Irish, our JV coach. He's now going on sixth or seventh year. Mike Theobald, my assistant coaches have been with me since day one. We just had a new addition to our freshman coach. He was our assistant coach and always our freshman coach, James Leipholm. These guys, those two guys have played for me and now coaches. And that's kind of an honor for me. I feel very good that they want to come back and help the program. But we've been real stable in that area. The terminology, the drills really helps, especially with the WAI only giving us a few days before we can get before a game. We can have a lot of our stuff in. And with the terminology that we have, it's great to have assistant coaches have been loyal and yet know what's going on and what to expect. Now, the last few years, your program has lost a lot of good players to graduation. For outside people have never seen Sheboygan Lutheran play before. You know, what kind of team do you put on the floor? We run, really, I think we're proud of the sets that we run and our play selection. We're athletic, especially this year will be athletic. I think that's going to be a plus for us. We have a little bit of youth coming in and that's exciting for me as a coach. Our freshman teams are going to be good at bringing some sophomores up. We'll switch things up on defense, which we want to keep the opponent a little off on what they're going to do offensively so they don't know what to expect. But those are some of the things. Get on the break if we don't get a couple of easy baskets then we'll get into some of our sets and the CLC. The coaches know our stuff and we know their stuff. So it's a challenge that way. But we think we have an exciting program at Lutheran High and I think people would be very interested and impressed with some of the things that we're trying to do. Who are some of those players this year that do you expect to contribute? Alex Maxon, Taylor Post, some seniors with some experience last year. Alex is a very fine shooter and worked on it this summer. He's going to be he's very athletic and jump well up and down the court. Nick Miller and other senior are very solid, not flashy, but really can get the job done. And then we have some sophomores coming up that will help us along with big junior Parker Anderson, the 6-4 kid. So when we get some of those youth coming in and these seniors with some leadership, we hope we can mix it up and be a challenge in the CLC. Why not only your program but I think the whole Lee lost a lot of players to graduation last year. Yes, some talented, some very good basketball players are gone and I think the teams are real solid basketball teams and but I don't know if there's a player or two that you need to plan for and scheme for and make sure that they're taken care of but then on the other hand I think from top to bottom our conference has gotten stronger and you better be able to play, be ready to play every night otherwise you're going to be in for a big surprise. I agree, I think it's going to be very competitive on any given night, anybody could beat anybody. Yeah, that's a fear of a coach because sometimes kids get these ideas that some teams may not be as good and you sit there and you can tell them and convince them but they better get out and be ready to go. We've always had them strong teams and but some of the teams that in the past got some has some really good coaching and you can see it's paying off. So where do you see Lutheran finishing this season? Well, we'd like to compete with all the teams and be up there and I think we can be and we've always been in the upper part of the CLC. We'd have to be in our A game every night to be in a one or two spot but we want to compete and stick in those upper one to four. We think we can be but boy it's going to be a tough year with some of the changes and with the teams that are getting better and better. So we'd like to stick in that upper half. Well best of luck this year and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thank you. When we return Marty will be with coach Flipsy from Sheboygan Christian. Joining me on the set is Brett Flipsy from Sheboygan County Christian. Brett, first of all, thanks a lot for stopping in. I really appreciate it. Let's talk a little bit about last year. It was a great season last year. It went 20 and three, I believe in 14 and two in conference and you made it to sectionals against Randolph, the state champion team. Talk a little bit about last year and how that success from last season might play into this season. Last year was a lot of fun. We were a squad with nine seniors from last year. Like you said we were 23. We were big. Every program needs success to build off of and I think last year was one of those seasons where we can build for the future. You know all the young kids in our program get to see and try to try to emulate those kids. And I think that was that was one of our biggest positives from last year is that we have a lot of kids that are really interested in basketball because of last year's team. You mentioned before we went on the air that you have a mirrored ink and a Veldkamp who graduated last year. Very good players on your squad. Yet you got a mirrored ink and a Veldkamp coming in. I would think you know the viewing their brothers last year certainly would play in a little bit to their wanting to be successful this season. Yeah, it never hurts to have success from your brothers and getting the younger brothers to play you always look at it and you see the youngest brothers always seem to be the best because they get to emulate what their older brothers did and they don't get to make the mistakes that their older brothers did. So we have two sophomores coming up that are moving up both Veldkamp and mirrored inks. So it'll be fun to I get to yell out that name again for the next three years. They did a study a number of years ago and I think you'll like this. They found out in the NFL of the top line backers. Most of them were the second sibling in a family because they always had to fight for things and that and I don't know if these kids coming up as sophomores or second siblings in their families. But like you'd mentioned you know if they're coming off of what their brothers did you know hopefully that'll pay dividends and you know they have to fight a little harder. They have a good group to emulate. I mean you know Tyler and John from last year's team were very solid basketball players and both of them have gone on to play sports in college. So I mean the younger brothers are going to have to fight. Yeah they will. When we did your game and Chris interviewed Tyler after the game I was very impressed with his demeanor. I mean he really seemed like a solid citizen. Oh yeah absolutely absolutely. Tyler Velkamp last year was your go to guy I would think you know his high score and was a guy you could look to when you needed big points. Who's going to take over that role this year. We're going to add by some traction this year. We're not going to we are unable to go to have one go to guy. We have we're going to be a fairly deep team. And it's going to be whoever shows me who has the hot hand is the one we're going to go to. This is a group that. Just like the younger brother situation we're going to have to fight for every game that we play. We're not as tall as we were last year. And there's going to be whoever steps up gets the ball. Now I've heard coaches talk about this. They say you want to have that go to guy you got to have that one guy that people can really depend on. If you were you know Grant you don't have a you don't have a choice this year because it's just the way the team is going to be but if you had your choice would you rather have a guy that you can go to or would you rather do the addition by subtraction. Well the way that we that we've always played we've never featured one guy. Our philosophy at Schwoing Christian is that the best players will find ways to score. You hardly ever see at our school someone averaging 30 points a game. Because our philosophy is if that kid ever gets hurt where is your program. You know so we we try to to go after a team aspect. And so you'd love to have someone good enough to be a go to guy. But we always we always try to teach team first. You mentioned a little bit about the you know not being as tall as last year so the the rebounding and those kinds of things are going to change a little bit but you do have one underclassman while he's not an underclassman now but coming back as you said you admit lost nine seniors and he's going to be a point guard. Talk about that kid a little bit. Nate Klopatik is our only returning starter from last year's team. Nate is maybe stretching at 5 10. So losing you know three guys at 6 6 or bigger last year he's not going to take over a rebounding role but he he provides a leadership role in this team that he was our glue last year already. And this year you know I just see him just growing into that role even further. Let's talk a little bit about the conference this year. Usberg lost a lot from last year Andrew Zimmerman was arguably the best player in the conference and how do you see that playing out? How do you see your team playing out and conference play? Well I think you've still got to say Usberg is going to be the team to beat. For years now they're the team that that stepped up and was you know conference champs. So I'd still say they're right there. Howard Grove has got a very deep team. Cedar Grove is going to be the big team this year. Don't look past Alcant Lake Ozaki. I think the conference is really stepped up. You don't have these star player players like we did last year. But every team that you're going to see in the in the CLC this year is very deep. And you know Christian Wolfe is is probably arguably the guy this year. So the conference conference. And that's who you open up against too by the way. Brett I want to thank you for stopping in. And when we come back I'll have coach Tom Destatelle from Shiboyga North. Training is a long time had coach at Shiboyga North Tom Destatelle. Tom thanks a lot for stopping in. Last year was an interesting kind of a season. You know you had a really great start. You ran off eight in a row in the early portion of the season. Then you ran into a little bit of a tough spell. I think it was going four and seven. But then you came on really strong towards the end and had a great tournament run. Well we we certainly finished strong. And we had our ups and downs last year as you will when you have underclassmen. And this year we've got a lot of them back. How do you think your strong finish from last year will play into this year? Well I'm sure the experience in the regional winning the regional tournament and then competing in the sectional winning a game at sectional and then playing for the right to go to Madison can only help the kids that were there. Fortunately or unfortunately for then was we lost to the eventual state champion and we weren't really in that game. If anybody went to the game they were very very good team. I think our juniors came away and sophomore Nolan free came away with a determination of what needs to be done. We've been there before and frankly that's been the big surprise of practice so far. You don't have to say too much about let's get after it or things like that. The seniors are pretty much taking over and we've got eight of them that are strong ball players. We've got an all conference player that's only a junior Nolan free. So we've got some experience. T.J. Kellner has been an offensive force for the last couple of years for your for your squad and he received good contributions from some of the seniors that are gone now. Derek Deezing stands out in my mind. Who else this year is going to help contribute to the scoring punch not that you have to lay it all on T.J. shoulders. Well we have four players who started the better part of the season last year returning. Andy Poles, Tim Schwere, Tom Iric and T.J. Kellner but Nolan free came off the bench never started a game last year made the conference all defensive team and was second team all conference. There's five pretty good ball players now. I think if we look for scorers that weren't mentioned in those five we've got kids like Tom Olsen that can can shoot the ball and that sort of thing too. Tom Iric was a real force in the middle for you last year and the thing that I think was a hurt you was that when he wasn't on the floor you got noticeably smaller Stockdale as a kid that I know didn't get much of an opportunity to play last year. How does he look in terms of helping out in the middle? Dan's a bit away from where he wants to be right now even though he's 6'8 and he's relatively healthy played some football for us this year he started for the football squad and picked up some much near needed game experience but when you miss an entire year with an ACL and don't get a chance to practice your basketball skills that sets you back but all in all he's still 6'8. One of the things that you know probably changes here I guess is Nolan Fried mentioned to him he was your sixth man last year and was just dynamite player and does he you look for him now to go into the starting lineup or are you going to keep bringing him off the bench? We can't keep Nolan on the bench in fact last year after the first few games of the year when he went in he never went out and that's the type of athlete Nolan was now right now he's going to be a starter and he's tough to we suffer when he's not in the ball game he's one of our best defensive players without a doubt. Ash Wabanan looks to have a really good team how do you see the conference playing out? Well Ash Wabanan's in the opposite division now there's two divisions in basketball and our division is just Mark Miller who writes basketball your book said coach this division is top heavy your division is top heavy and I mean there's just some awesome teams and you don't have to look far to find Manitowoc and South and then you pair those up with the the depears of the world Preble and Green Bay East that's it's a tough division. Last question for you coach you open on Tuesday, December 4th against South I don't know if that's your first game but what are your thoughts about playing that North South game on a Tuesday night versus a Saturday like has been the case the last few years? If we would have put it on a Saturday this year we would have been not a big disadvantage next year we have to take a look at the same situation you can't put one team at a disadvantage with the rest of the conference by doing it that way you kind of have to play it as is scheduled and that's what we're trying to do now next year we're going to take a look at the situation with all four coaches involved and see what happens Coach I want to thank you for stopping in and wish you all the best of luck this year when we return Chris and I'll wrap up today's program welcome back everybody first of all I want to thank all the coaches for giving their time to come in and speak with us and add to the program it's really a great thing that they do that Chris yes it is and they are in the middle of their practice sessions and it's just their second week of practice so they got a lot of stuff to put in and the games are going to be starting soon we have a great schedule coming up for high school basketball why don't we talk a little bit about the key games that are coming up on our schedule well what's really shocking is that the North South Games are real early in the season this year so we'll have them as usual I think the other funny thing about it is you know we're used to always doing those on a Saturday and the first one is going to be on a Tuesday night yeah the first one will be on a Tuesday and then of course we have our traditional Lutheran and Schwoing Christian as you said the holy war at the shore but that wasn't me but I think one fun team to watch this year will be Ashwabbanan Ashwabbanan comes in from the former Bay and now joins the new conference and I believe they're going to be ranked in the top five in state and they have to take both their trips to Sheboygan this year and so I'm glad that we have them on the slate they'll be exciting but of course the man to walk game will be good with a disaster boy who's got some home roots here in Sheboygan so yeah that's our first game actually so that number 30th yeah so that's always nice to have some of that in there so those man to walk games are fun and Ashwabbanan will be fun and like I said the old traditional games are always good too let's talk about the two conferences that we'll be covering the Fox River Classic conference and the Central Lakeshore conference let's start with Central Lakeshore seems like every year Usberg always seems to be at the top now they lost a lot of players from last year yes they I think the whole conference lost a lot of players this year but you know Usberg JV's were really good last year and I think Sheboygan Christian had some pretty good JV's players as well but but Usberg's always tough to pick again so I've got to go with Coach Booneg out there at Usberg and I'll go with you on that too let's talk about the Fox River Classic conference I think in the opening I may have said it wrong but Ashwabbanan looks like the real deal and I know North has a nice team coming back they've got those three sophomores that started I don't necessarily mean they started as sophomores but they were on the team and played a lot and they got to be a force in there too right and with there's two divisions this year Ashwabbanan will be in the other division they get to play everybody in the early division wants and everybody twice excuse me and everybody in the other division wants and I really believe that it's going to be real close especially in the division that's like in north and south is anybody can pick off anybody in any given time I know North was picked to win it in the book or the as we call the basketball bible that Mark Miller who used to work for the press does I'll take north but I don't think it's going to be easy I think there's going to be some tough teams south could could easily get it Mantua could get it I don't think it's going to be as easy on this side as it will be for Ashwabbanan on the other side now are they splitting up the conference like you mentioned just for scheduling purposes correct there will not be a play off no they're just like two divisions right they're just playing strictly you know you play the pier and Mantua and Preble and east and north and south that's one division so they'll play each other twice and you have one crossover game let me ask you this Chris between the two divisions which one do you think is the harder one well I think the harder one if you want to win your league will be this one with north and south but Ashwabbanan is really really good so you know and on the way they could kind of breeze through there correct I think they'll have a little easier route on that side Bayport will be okay and things like that but another thing we should watch in our division will be to pier and they'll be okay well that being said then I'm going to pick Ashwabbanan and that's going to do it for a show Chris I want to thank you for coming in and doing it and I look forward doing the games with you this year I want to thank our viewers for watching and again I want to thank the coaches for chiming in and adding to the program the way they do and that's going to be it for a show thanks for watching and we'll see you down the road