Dexter Bearcats enter new season as a healthy team, finally

sports@standard-democrat.com

DEXTER -- For a team that had already lost its top scorer to graduation, everything that could have went wrong did last season for the Dexter Bearcats.

Before the year could even get underway, the Bearcats lost their most steady hand, Chase Young, to an ACL tear that was only the start of an injury plagued campaign.

With a full offseason to mend, Dexter is hoping to use last year's struggles as a building block to a more successful 2013-14 campaign.

"At least we're healthy this year," Dexter head coach Rob Nichols said. "We have the one injury with Cody Neldon, which we know we're not going to have him back for the whole season.

"Last year we started out with probably five of our top six guys that couldn't do a whole lot, especially the first couple of weeks and we started getting them back slowly. Practice has been a lot better to start the season, so that's a positive."

Had he been healthy Young would have likely been one of the Bearcats' leading scorers in his lost senior year. Besides Young Dexter will have to replace the graduated Brad Potts, who averaged close to eight points-per-game last season.

Among returning starters D.J. comes back after leading the team in scoring last season with 12 points-per-game. He'll be joined by Nick Noble and Myles Urhahn as returning starters from last season.

Much like he did during the football season, Crystal City transfer Peyton Pollock, a junior, is expected to step in an contribute heavily after playing varsity as a sophomore last year for the Hornets.

Sophomore Chandler Young returns as the sophomore with the most varsity experience with his classmates Cole Renken and Noah Kronk seeing light varsity action in their freshman year while playing mainly at the junior varsity level.

"We have a few guys that have some varsity experience, but we'll have some young guys that will have to help us out this year," Nichols said. "We have some sophomores that I feel shoot the ball pretty good. I think they can help us. It may take a little while to get started, but once they get that confidence I think they'll help us.

"I hope we can shoot the ball better this year. We don't have a great deal of size so we're going to have to have balanced scoring."

One area Dexter hopes to have helped their self in is their brutal schedule to start the season. Forced to take on powerhouses like Charleston and Sikeston annually to start their regular season, the Bearcats go regularly meet one of the two again in the SEMO Conference Tournament.

This in large part led to a 0-5 start for Dexter last season before they put some wins together and finished the year 7-17.

Hoping to lighten their load Dexter has elected to forgo the SEMO Conference Tournament while picking up a few more regular season games, including a home game again Perryville.

"I'm not sure what affect it will have on us," Nichols said of the schedule change. "It just seems like the last four or five years we would see Charleston, Sikeston in the first two regular season games and then turn around and see one of those guys again. We would probably then see Jackson and turn around and play them again the next month.

"Any team around that starts out Charleston, Sikeston, Charleston, Jackson and Jackson is going to have a very difficult way to start the season."

Though the loss of the SEMO Conference Tournament will undoubtedly lighten there early season schedule is still no cakewalk as they'll face Charleston, Sikeston, Twin Rivers and Jackson in their first four games alone.

Dexter starts its season on the road against the Charleston Bluejays.