Season Preview: Perry boys’ and girls’ programs leaning into youth movement with upperclassmen in short supply

The boys’ basketball program at Perry High School is young, very young.

You’ll often see teams called that after a hefty senior class graduates, and the Panthers did lose six seniors last year, but this year they only have three upperclassmen including one senior — Julian Parker.

With three sophomores and eight freshmen a big focus for head coach Mark Gainous is development of the younger players, and thus the program.

“Our philosophy is we’re just hitting the reset button as far as going young,” Gainous said. “If it’s close between a freshman and a junior we’re always going to take the freshman. It’s not fair to the juniors, it’s not fair to the freshmen [either way]. Eight of the 15 guys that we took, non-football guys, are freshmen in our program.”

“We feel good about it. The guys have a lot of energy, just trying to teach them how we want to play, we’ve had some good practices so far,” Gainous added.

The only caveat when fielding so many freshmen is that it’s hard to be immediately competitive as they learn the game and gain experience. Not everyone is a freshman phenom, and developing teams are often prone to high turnover rates, bad shot selection and poor positioning and understanding of defensive concepts that make it hard to come away with wins on a nightly basis.

That fact is compounded when the offensive system asks players to make decisions, like the Princeton offense Gainous is implementing.

The Princeton offense uses simple actions that often chain together and require the offense to read the defense and decide the best course of action. In this offense there are four “positionless” perimeter players and one five man (center).

You will often see perimeter players screening for each other, and the five can act as another screener, execute dribble handoffs, or be used as a passer on the elbow to cutters among other things.

That’s a relatively watered-down description, but the emphasis in this offense is decision-making, which as mentioned before, is usually a struggle for younger players. It is often used in college or professional leagues, though.

What pushed this move towards an actual system-based offense was the summer scrimmages, where the Panthers ran a lot of dribble-drive, an extremely common offense in high school. That system boils down to driving the ball and kicking out to the perimeter where players can either shoot, attack a closeout or pass along 3-point line. It works for many, but its simplicity is both its greatest strength and weakness, and Gainous wasn’t pleased with what he was seeing from it.

“I think that’s gonna be different for this area,” Gainous said. “I’m hopeful that our style of play will be so different from everybody else that we play against, that that might give us some type of edge over our opponents.”

With all that being said, much of Perry’s basketball team will be missing for as many as six weeks to begin the regular season as the Panthers’ football season continues. They could be back next week if Perry loses on Friday, or they could be gone until mid-December if the Panthers make it back to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Gainous said that more than 15 players in the basketball program are involved with football, and that seven or eight of them are on varsity and considered part of their top 10 or 11 players.

“I really like our freshman class, so we’re just gonna throw ‘em out there. We’re not gonna move games back, we’re just gonna play with the guys that we have…there’s no excuses, we’re just gonna play. The goal for us is to be playing our best basketball mid-January right before the region tournament,” Gainous said.

The silver lining of missing the football players is that players who might otherwise be buried in the rotation have a real shot to separate themselves and gain valuable experience, potentially until mid-December, where Perry will have at least played seven games.

“They get six-to-eight weeks basically being in the mix, guys that might not get a chance to play varsity in late December, early January,” Gainous said. “They’re in the mix as freshmen on the varsity team. Our entire theory for the program, our philosophy is, throw ‘em out there, let ‘em play, let ‘em make mistakes.” 

“We have to realize that we have a younger team, and we also have to realize that all the football programs here are very good…they’re gonna go into the third, fourth [round, or the] state championship game ever year. That’s part of the job, we have to be very creative as coaches to make sure that we blend the football guys with the non-football guys and hopefully be playing good basketball in January.”

Time will tell which Panthers will rise through the ranks, but the regular season will tip off on Saturday, Nov. 23 at 1:30 p.m. at home against Howard.

The Lady Panthers basketball team, not unlike the boys’ program, played a lot of young players last year.

Head coach Fran McPherson only lost two seniors over the summer, and returns a nice blend of all grade levels highlighted by five seniors.

Of those returning, senior forward Anna Dean, who accompanied McPherson to media day, has separated herself from the pack among others.

Dean’s outside shooting and her ability to contribute on both ends of the floor garnered praise, even as she’s asked to step into a bigger role in the post.

Senior guard Kennedi Miller wows coaches and players with her on-ball abilities, and McPherson said that once she figures out what she wants out of the game of basketball, the sky is the limit.

Another senior is Markalye Ragin, a 5-foot-1 guard who McPherson said, “plays like she’s 6-foot-4.”

Taking the next step for these players and the program is a matter of execution now that McPherson and the Lady Panthers have a season with each other under their belt.

Perry lost four of their games by two points or less. Flipping some of those results while also keeping some of those blowouts from getting away from them is a matter of taking care of the ball and situational awareness, according to McPherson.

“We were definitely close in a lot of games. I was really proud of our last game, we about knocked off Spalding who had beaten us twice, so I see the progress that we make, but we just gotta take care of the basketball,” McPherson said. “I always tell our kids, you gotta know the time, the score and the situation. You’ve gotta make the plays, you’ve gotta make the passes, you’ve gotta take care of the basketball.”

“We have a plan for all those things, and maybe that we’re going to feel a little more confident in what I’m asking them to do,” McPherson added. “How to work through each of those situations so that we’re not turning the ball over…we know when we want to run a little clock, what we have to do exactly to pull through those situations.”

Even if those things don’t go perfectly, and some games do get away from the Lady Panthers, players and coaches alike have enjoyed the progress the program is making.

“The program is definitely going in the right direction,” Dean said. “My senior class, we’ve played since we were freshmen, and we’ve only gotten better. I just think the underclassmen are proving themselves, and they’re good, and I just see this program going in the right direction.”

McPherson enjoyed more summer participation from her team this year, too.

“I think the one thing that I have really enjoyed with our kids [is that] they have put forth the effort to be involved in summer basketball,” McPherson said. “We played about 20 games this summer. We went to Auburn’s basketball camp, we went to Monroe in Albany and then to various schools. It was nice to have our kids their and have the camaraderie and get to know each other.”

“The thing that I think was key this summer was bringing young kids in, and trying to blend them in with our older kids. I think that’s definitely a plus in the direction we’re trying to go,” McPherson added. “I’m really excited about the effort our kids have been putting in the program and I think that’s one of the things we’ve got to do to turn it around is get people involved. I’ve got one kid playing AAU basketball, I wish I had more. That would definitely be helpful because everybody else we play, they have their kids involved in AAU. That’s another step I wish our kids, we could get them to take to get to the next level where we want to be.”

Perry may be a little ways away from competing for region and state championships, but there is excitement in the progress they’ve made, and once everybody from other sports comes in, McPherson is ready to see the finished product.

“I’m very excited, I told [the team] the other day, I have some high aspirations…I think we may look a little not all put together yet, and one reason for that is we’ve got [players in other sports],” McPherson said. “Anna just came off the softball field, she basically just got to practice last week (last week of October). We’ve got two starters that are out there with flag football…so we really haven’t had everyone in the gym yet. But the bits and the pieces that I see I’m just super excited about.”

The Lady Panthers tip off their season on Saturday, Nov. 23 at 12 p.m. at home against Howard.