WS Chronicle

The Reynolds boys’ basketball team enjoyed a great season last year. The Demons finished the year 13-2 with their only regular season loss coming at Glenn. They made it all the way to the third round of the playoffs, losing to Audrey Kell of Charlotte. Head coach Billy Martin is hoping to build upon that great season with even more success this year.

“What we kind of focused on in the offseason is getting better individually, focusing on their individual improvement through our skill development,” Martin said. “We spent a lot of time on that and the closer we got to the school year, we started focusing on our team goals and what we wanted to get accomplished this year.”

The Demons lost a couple of very productive seniors in Tyreik Leach and Caden Davis last season. However, Coach Martin did have a couple of transfer students come in, most notably Marc Raye Jr. from Albemarle High School. Raye is a scoring point guard who also enjoys getting his teammates involved.

“With the addition of a couple guys like Marc Raye Jr., who is a natural point guard, and that’s a position we felt like we needed help in and luckily he came here,” said Martin about Raye. “With his quickness, his basketball IQ, and him playing as hard as he plays, is definitely an asset to us and what we are trying to get done this year.”

Martin had a wealth of youth talent on the team last year. Those players are now juniors and Martin is hoping that experience from last season bodes well for the players and his team this season.

“As a team we are going to try to make up for those losses as a team,” Martin said about losing the production from his seniors last year. “Not one individual can come in and replace those guys, so one of our team goals is to play as a team.

“We lost almost 40 or 50 points with Leach and Caden Davis and I think the team who were on our varsity last year had a great preseason and we are just looking to have a balanced scoring attack. We don’t care who’s scoring what, just as long as we are doing it within our team offense and what we can get from that.”

Martin says it’s part of the game to lose players and have the next group step up into that leadership role. He feels the sophomores put in the work during the offseason to prepare them for that role.

“Once you get to the playoffs and your returning guys, it gives them confidence to see what it will take to return to that level again,” he said. “These guys have come in and worked really hard during the offseason and they know what it takes now to play and get back to playoff basketball. So, hopefully, we continue to improve and be able to return to the playoffs again this year.”

This is the 17th season for Martin at Reynolds. He says one of the things that has kept him around so long is his ability to adapt his coaching style to the players he has on his roster.  

With so many sophomores on last year’s team, Martin didn’t bring up any players from his JV team from last year. He felt there was a lot of depth in those players, which was the reason he kept them on varsity to gain that experience to prepare them for this year.  

Reynolds opened the season with a victory against Salem Baptist 74-65 last Wednesday night. Martin was not totally happy with the result, but was happy his team got the win.

“We went in and it was the three things we wanted to look at, which is an old cliché: we wanted to play hard, we wanted to play together, we wanted to play smart,” he stated. “We got two out of the three out of the way; we played hard, we played together, we just didn’t play smart. At times there were some lapses in the game where we allowed them to get back into the game, but those are the things that we can correct on the practice floor and hopefully it will carry over into tomorrow’s game.”

Martin says he believes in challenging his players during the non-conference portion of the schedule. “This is a tough conference and if you are fortunate enough to make the playoffs, it’s tough; 4A basketball is hard,” Martin said about his thought process when making his non-conference schedule. “You just want to prepare your team the best you can, and I think by putting together a tough non-conference schedule helps that.”

Even though his team is young, Martin still has the goal of his team making the playoffs. He feels they are possibly in place to compete for a state championship if the pieces fall in place.

“I think we have a few pieces that could possibly get us to that level, but to get that far, you got not to just be good, you have to be lucky too,” Martin said about his team. “And like I said, I start four juniors and one senior. We don’t have a lot of game experience and that’s where we are hoping to improve as the season goes on, as these kids grow and mature.”