After a long Christmas break that saw the team get its first losses of the season, the Farmer boys [14-3] come back in hopes to rebound against Denton Ryan [6-10] in their first district game. Last year, the Farmers also played the Raiders first in their district, winning both games 43-42 and 47-38. Even with the two wins from last year, head coach Gary Collier is expecting Denton Ryan to come out playing pretty tough.

“They’re probably not as big as we are,” Collier said. “I know I expect them to kind of sit on the ball a little bit and try to shorten the game by not shooting as many times and making us work pretty hard on defense.”

Collier said the team is continuing to practice, and learning how to play well in the zone and fixing visible problems in the team.

“I’m sure they’ll play zone, not man-to-man,” Collier said. “We’re working on some jumps and 3-point shooting, because we haven’t been shooting the ball very well, and I’m pretty sure they’ve noticed that.”

Denton Ryan’s offense is quick, meaning the Farmers have to stay in front of them, but their defense is an asset to the boys.

“Defensively, they don’t guard as well as some other teams we’ve played, so we’ve really got to take advantage of that by passing the ball inside to our bigger guys,” Collier said.

Collier said that none of the games counted until now. It was a good slap in the face for the boys to go from undefeated to losing three games that realistically could have and should have been won. Collier said that the reason for the losses was the lack of practice over the Christmas break.

“We had a mandatory five days we couldn’t practice, and you tell the guys to go out and practice and shoot around, and it’s hard to do that around the holidays because you want to spend time with your family and everybody else,” Collier said. “Because of that you come back and you pretty much have to get right back into playing games after not playing for the last five games, and your rhythm is off. You lose a little bit of your conditioning and I think we’re back now. Things like that kind of hurt you during the break time.”

The first game was lost to Houston St. Thomas by one point. The second game against Plano was lost by 6, and the third game was lost to Plano West by 6 in double overtime. The three loses dropped the team from 4th place in the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches (TABC) 5A poll to 11th.

“Any time you lose, something’s got to move around,” Collier said. “It’s also just the teams we lost to. We lost to Plano West, which isn’t a bad team to lose to, but we lost to Plano and Saint Thomas. It isn’t that bad either, but it’s one of those things where if you lose, some things are going to change. I’m not so worried about our ranking. I like the fact that it was like a wake up call to our guys.”

Collier said the team was also not putting in as good of an effort as they should have to begin their games, but with the way the rank has been affected, the boys have become more motivated.

“It was getting to the point where we would win a lot of games, and we had gotten complacent, and we would wait until the fourth quarter to try to play,” Collier said. “I think now just seeing that drop in rank has helped.”

The team is working hard to get their head back in the game. Senior Diamante Langston has averaged to 14.2 points per game, with a total of 242 points so far. Junior Marquis Williams averages out 5.2 points per game with a total of 257 so far.

Collier said that soon, the team will be picking up momentum along with district.

“We’re working very hard. It’s just one of those times,” Collier said. “Every year toward the end of December and early part of January, the kids hit a wall, and they get tired and you’ve got a fight in you. Coaches have to come up with more dynamic ways to run practice because after a while it seems to get a little bit boring.

“Our players have become more mature and they’re able to understand the importance of practice, and towards the end of the season, they seem to pick it up again because now you can see more of the finish line and what it’s leading up to.”