LJ BB: A lot of weapons



Vikings senior Eddie Parker sets up offense

against Santana Nov. 27. (Photos by Ed Piper)

La Jolla's basketball team is going to field a lot of weapons this season. There are size and bangers inside, with Alex Pitrofsky, Charlie Gal, and Daniel McColl. There's outside shooting, with Reed Farley, Nick Hammel, Quinn Rawdin, and others. There's ball-handling besides Farley, including Eddie Parker and Hammel.

The Vikings looked fairly tight and cohesive in their preseason scrimmages Fri., Nov. 27, at Grossmont High. They blitzed a Santana team that wasn't ready for a 9 a.m. start. They came back from a deficit to a good Grossmont team to ultimately outscore the Hillers by five points.

"I'm not going to be afraid to put any of the 10 players into the game," said LJHS coach Paul Baranowski Sun., Nov. 29, in his office at the Jewish Community Center in UTC, anticipating Tuesday's opener at Petco Park.

Gone are the days when Baranowski padded the bench with the player or two who, realistically, weren't going to contribute when the game mattered but whom the coach kept on the roster because of their allegiance to the program and hard work in practice.

"It's not likely you'll see a roster with more than 10 players from here on," said Baranowski. In his first three years at the helm, he usually carried 13 players or so.

"It rarely works out to have players sitting on the bench who are not going to play," he said. "We're thinking we may have a rotation that includes all 10 players."

Sophomore Charlie Gal drives for the basket

against Grossmont in scrimmage.

As evidence of the slimming down, none of the likely non-starters is a senior who is not fairly proficient and who won't contribute. In fact, two of the reserves are sophomores, big man Gal and wing Rawdin.

So, what has been seen in summer and fall leagues is basically two units, the starters and a group that comes in relatively early in the game to supplement what the starters will do.

Of course, with games that really count starting Tuesday, "everyone plays" can go out the window.

Veteran Morgan Albers flips

a free throw in Foothiller

workout.

Copyright 2015 Ed Piper