Dryden basketball bringing back entire team

Dryden boys basketball was able to rack up several solid wins during the shortened season after a few years of struggle for the program. One of those victories came against the defending Section IV champion Newfield Trojans. The program is starting to turn a corner, especially since the nine players on last season’s roster will be back on the team this year.

While there will be a few new players on the team up from the junior-varsity squad, the fact that the majority of players have varsity experience is a great benefit to the team. Head coach Zach LeViere spoke to the advantages that experience gives him for this upcoming season.

“It’s a great feeling to have all the guys back and a couple of new guys on the team as well to incorporate,” LeViere said. “It’s also just exciting to be able to be back to a sense of normalcy as well, being able to plan on having a full season and being able to do summer league and do a little bit of fall league basketball. [I’m] just excited to get started with the regular season again.”

LeViere went into further detail about how he can use his team’s experience to make Dryden a tough opponent in Section IV.

“Having everyone back from last year, we’re just able to build in some things that you can’t do when you’re kind of reworking the roster every year,” he said. “So, we’re able to get a leg up going into the first week of practice and hopefully be able to hit the ground running and start adding some new layers.”

LeViere is ready to put his team to the test too. There are challenging opponents on the schedule as well as a stretch of six straight-away games in the middle of the season. Putting his players to the test is an exciting prospect for the head coach.

“It’s just exciting to be able to look forward and think about goals in terms of hoping to win the division and be able to play for an IAC Championship and have that as a realistic goal for the team,” LeViere said. “We’ve got an opening game against Seton Catholic that we added in to start the season. We’re looking forward to playing some of those Class B top-tier teams. I’m looking forward to seeing how we test up against Seton Catholic, who has been a dominant force in Class B for decades.”

One of the most promising parts of the Dryden basketball team is the returning junior duo of point guard Colton Dow and center Xavier Scott. The pair started as sophomores and made a huge impact on the court.

“I’m excited to see how these two play together this season,” LeViere said. “This will be their first full varsity season playing together. Colton has been playing on varsity since he was a freshman, and Xavier came up for a couple games as a freshman. Then, of course, we only got 11 games in last year. I’m really looking forward to seeing these two grow together in their skills and see their skills come along. Definitely, over the course of [the] three-and-a-half-month season, you just get so much better at basketball. I’m also looking forward to seeing their confidence growing.”

LeViere went into further detail about that confidence, which his team was able to build in the 11-game season.

“It’s fun to see a young kid come up and take on that challenge of playing varsity basketball,” he said. “I think one of the hardest things to build is that confidence, having that kind of swagger on the court and confidence in themselves and confidence in their game to know that they can really control a game at the varsity level. That kind of confidence is the type of thing that only comes through experience.”

Dryden plays in the IAC Large School North Division against Lansing, Trumansburg and Whitney Point. The Lions did not play Lansing last season but went 2-1 against Trumansburg and Whitney Point combined. That leads to sizable goals for LeViere and his Dryden team.

“Our starting goal, for sure, is to win the division, then be able to go on and play in the IAC Large School Championship in February,” LeViere said. “With that long-term goal, that allows us to focus in on a week-to-week basis and think about the shorter steps that we need to take in order to achieve that goal. We’ll need to take it game by game and week by week, and focusing on doing the little things that we need to do in practice and preparing to beat the teams that we need to beat in order to achieve that goal.”

Following scrimmages against Candor and Odessa-Montour, Dryden will start its season against the aforementioned Seton Catholic team Nov. 30. With a full squad of players with varsity experience, Dryden is ready to make noise in the IAC.

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