Lions off to 2-2 start in early portion of the season
By Jacob Meikel
The St. Joseph Christian boys basketball team haven’t won a district title since 2012, but its core of experienced seniors this season could end that drought.
The Lions are off the heels of a third-place finish last week in the Platte Valley Invitational, with still plenty of basketball to be played and more chances to merge together a strong senior core with a group of valued players who had little experience competing at the varsity level heading into the season.
“We’re trying to give us much playing time as we can, get a lot of players on the floor and just put them in situations that they haven’t been able to replicate over the last year,” head coach Neal Hook said.
St. Joseph Christian as seen growth from the last two seasons, improved from 11 wins in 2022-23 to 17 in 2023-24. Scoring has not been up to par this year for Christian, they’re roughly 10 points under their average from last season with only a handful of games into 2024-25, but the team remains confident that will get figured out.
“It’ll come,” senior Nick Orscheln said. “The shots will come, the shots haven’t been falling, but they’ll come. We’ll be good by the end of the season.”
Until the shots do begin to fall, the team will fall back on the aspects of the game they may have more control over. According to senior Logan Hubble, he says that head coach Neal Hook talks a lot about rebounding and effort.
If we do well, hopefully we will do well, it’ll be because of that high effort and that’ll be what makes it stand out,” Hubble said.
The Lions will press forward and carry over their current one-game win streak into a bout with rival Bishop LeBlond on Tuesday night. The Golden Eagles have owned the history of the matchup, winning the last eight times the two teams have met.
