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Portageville Bulldogs return youth from 13-11 season
PORTAGEVILLE -- The Portageville Bulldogs basketball team said goodbye to most of their production a season ago due to graduation.
They'll have to rely on up-and-coming AV Banks, a few returners and a wealth of junior varsity players from a year ago to help them this season.
"We have a lot of youth coming up from the jayvee level," Portageville head coach Jason Irby said. "We are probably a little bit inexperienced and we're not really big. So far our kids have been working really hard and have been real coachable and have really bought in to working hard."
The Bulldogs will try to improve on their 13-11 record, but will have to do it without it's stars from last year.
Dominique Walker and Dion Foster both graduated after leading the team in scoring. Walker led Portageville with 20 points and seven rebounds a game as an all-conference selection in the Bootheel Conference. Foster was the point guard for the Bulldogs who set up most of their offense. He also helped the scoring load with his ability to drive to the basket.
"We lost a lot of scoring with Dominique and Dion's ability to set up our offense," said Irby. "Offensively, we're not going to be able to replace Dominique as far as one guy scoring. We'll have to do it as a group. We've got some kids that can knock down an open shot."
Portageville's best returning scorer is AV Banks.
Banks emerged as their best scorer behind Walker and Foster last season. He enters his second full season as a varsity member after not playing basketball since his eighth grade year.
According to Irby, Banks can shoot the ball really well and has improved his ability to drive to the basket.
"As the year went on [last year] he really started finding his way," Irby said. "He started knocking down his shot more consistently and he had a good summer in terms of getting stronger and working on his ball handling. Hopefully, those things will pay off for him. We're going to count on him a lot to score the ball for us."
Behind Banks will be Portageville's inside presence of Derrick Priggel and Caleb Gooch.
The left-handed Priggel returns as their best inside scorer after playing junior varsity last season.
"He's a little undersized, but he's an aggressive kid," Irby said about Priggel. "He makes up for his lack of size by being really aggressive. We hope for him to be able to score around the basket for us."
Still nursing a football injury, Gooch is expected to return for the basketball season, but his return is not known. Irby said the senior provides his team with size and experience around the basket.
Frederico Walton will hope to fill Foster's role as Portageville's point guard after playing most of last year with the jayvee.
"We have young players that lack experience, but these kids have been really enjoyable to coach," Irby said. "They have really embraced working hard and doing things the right way. I'm not sure where that will put us on the win-loss column but they've been a pleasurable bunch to coach and it's made it enjoyable every day."
Portageville begins their season on the road against East Prairie Friday, Dec. 6