The Citrus College Men’s Basketball team lost all five starting players and two bench players coming into the 2018-19 season.
Last season the team finished with a 27-5 record and their second consecutive conference championship.
“Ya we had a great year, every year is different, we look to build on that success,” said Head coach Brett Lauer. “We’ve got good leadership amongst the guys, and like I said we’re rarely coaching energy, we’re rarely having to coach effort, so we get to coach basketball.”
Point Guard Josh Caston suffered a toe injury that caused him to miss the 2017-18 season, he said how he feels to be back on the court, “Good, the process coming back was long, this team is exciting, I’m happy to be here, we have a great coaching staff,” Caston said.
Caston said, he has set individual goals going into the season along with goals for the Owls this season.
“As a team obviously the goal is to win, say, as many games as possible,” Caston said “As a player I want to work on my leadership more, I want to have a higher level of energy.”
Winning was no issue during the regular season for the Owls last season, they look to keep that momentum going this year. Coach Lauer said offense was their strongest asset last season, averaging 10 to 14 three pointers a game.
Jesse Elrod a sophomore at the Power Forward/ Center position is returning for his second season with the Owls.
“I feel really confident with my team this year,” Elrod said. “We have a lot of new young guys on the team.”
“I feel like we are a lot more athletic than last year, so that can really be useful to us this year.”
Elrod said he wants to improve on his rebounding this season and take on more of a leadership role being one of the few returning players.
The season starts in less than a month, and Elrod and the rest of the team have been in constant practice mode until the season tips of.
“It’s a constant grind, and we look to compete at such a high level against the other team that we really just wanna break you at the end of the game,” Elrod said. “There’s peoples breaking points and we wanna find that, and when we do find that, oh, it’s a scary thing after that.”
The first game game is Nov. 2, against Orange Coast at the San Diego Classic. Orange Coast is the team who knocked the Owls out of the playoffs last season.
Elrod said he is looking forward to the match up and expects the game to be competitive, and is ready to put all of their hard work to the test.
