All high school basketball coaches look for their teams to make improvements by the start of the season’s second half and to be in position to make a run in the postseason.
Mark Barth is no different. The Bethlehem Christian Academy boys basketball coach has clear goals for the Knights as they begin the journey down the road of the second stage of the 2012-2013 campaign.
“Our goal is not only to make the state tournament but to advance once we are there,” Barth said Monday. “What we hope to accomplish is to be playing our best as we enter the region tournament. I believe we have a team that can make a run in region and get to state.”
Last Friday’s game against Curtis Baptist produced some positive results for BCA, even though the Knights fell 69-52.
“If we play as well as we did Friday night for a complete 32 minutes we will be fine,” Barth said. “We played poorly in our Christmas tournament so it was good to see us play much better Friday. We did grow up a little bit. For 29 minutes, it was a ballgame. The difference came down to three minutes.”
Curtis Baptist advanced to the Final Four a season ago so Barth had a good gauge as to how far his team has progressed this season.
“They could win it all again,” the Knights coach said. “We played well against them. Our players didn’t quit.”
Kevin Green and Travis Burchfield both scored 14 points against Curtis Baptist. Burchfield also had 11 rebounds. Niko Mailloux finished with 12 points while Ben Morgan was a force on the boards with eight rebounds.
“We played well against a very good team,” Barth said. “We had a moment in the second quarter that we allowed them to get up by 12-14 points and we couldn’t quite rebound from that. I was proud of how hard and well we played, I just was not happy with the end result.”
BCA will return to action Thursday against Brandon Hall before traveling to Shiloh Christian in Monticello Friday. Both games are non-region contests.
Region action will continue Jan. 15 against John Hancock Academy at home and a Jan. 18 road trip to Nathanael Greene.
“If we can pick up where we left off Friday we will be OK,” Barth said. “We had a great effort Friday. We just need to build on it and keep improving as the season goes on.”
