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PHS boys hoops had solid summer

Photo by Jay W. Bennett Parkersburg High School boys basketball head coach Jeff Mennillo looks on with dismay during a regular-season game last year inside Memorial Fieldhouse versus Huntington.

PARKERSBURG — Veteran Big Red head coach Jeff Mennillo watched his Parkersburg boys basketball team get to within one victory of reaching the Class AAA state tournament last winter.

Suffice it to say, everyone should expect the red and white to be in contention for Charleston again once hoops season rolls around.

Of course, coach Mennillo already figures to be behind schedule, which is a good thing.

“I’m thinking the football team is going to be pretty good,” stated Mennillo, who didn’t have Brenton Strange and Jake Johnson available for most of the summer period. “I’ve been in the weight room a couple times. Those guys are so much bigger and stronger. They are getting great leadership and there is so much enthusiasm.

“Coach (Mike) Byus is doing a great job. I think that will have us playing catch-up. We’ll start slow, but I think when we get to where we need to be, man I think we are going to be pretty good.”

Despite losing a couple of key cogs off last year’s squad that fell at Huntington in a Class AAA regional co-final, which included second-team Class AAA all-stater Parker Miller, the Big Reds could be even better this year.

“I love our team,” Mennillo added, noting all his pivots this year will know how to play the four. “I love the way our guys get along so well together, such good chemistry, and they root for each other, which is neat.

“We feel like we are in a real good spot and hopefully the football team does well and we get our guys back healthy and go through that transition. I’ll be really shocked if we don’t go at least a week or two without those football guys.”

Although not having Strange and Johnson most of the time might not seem ideal, it actually worked out as a positive according to Mennillo.

“That gave some kids an opportunity to grow and an opportunity for some kids to step up,” he said. “I think it was really good for us. We have a couple guys who I really feel like have to be major contributors next year for us to be successful. It gave them an opportunity to kind of have to carry the burden a little bit.

“Jacob McKnight, Kionte Peacock, Dylan Shaver and Gavin Dudley, all those guys all had to step up a little bit with those two guys out. We’ve got four or five really good sophomores who are going to be juniors and a couple juniors who are going to be seniors. That opportunity gave those guys a lot of opportunities to get minutes.”

PHS competed in a trio of AAU tournaments before the open period and won two of those. That included a championship at the Friendly City Shootout in Wheeling, which 2017-18 state champion George Washington captured last summer.

“That was pretty good,” Mennillo said of the Big Reds’ triumph. “We went to the GW shootout and struggled a little bit at times. They played a very competitive game against GW and lost it late. We got spanked by Logan. (David) Early just killed us.

“We beat Cabell Midland. With the exception of that Logan game and us not looking very good in that particular game, we looked pretty good throughout most of the open period. We are pretty excited about what we feel like this season brings.”

Mennillo also felt several other Big Reds had solid summer showings, which included the likes of Carter Stone, Jake Leisure, Sam Potts, Braeden Mason, Brody Asbury and Noah Umpleby.

While there is a lot of time between now and the official start of basketball season, PHS fans should feel pretty optimistic about the Big Reds’ chances of making a deep postseason run.

“Gavin also had a really good summer,” added the coach. “My feeling is that Gavin, we’ve got to figure out a way for him to play the four, so he and Brent (Strange) can play together. It was one of those things we talked about last year. Our offense is pretty complicated and by the time we knew what Gavin could bring, we didn’t have time to start things over.

“Shame on me for that. We are not going to have that problem going into next year. All of our fives will know how to play on the perimeter and that will give us a lot of different ways (to attack) next year.”

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