Just one senior and less than five juniors make up the upperclassmen for Dickson County basketball this season.
An exceptionally young team for new head coach Steve Dodd, they will look to just begin building a culture.
Despite being very young, it is worth pointing out there will be a lot of athleticism on the floor for the Cougars.
Multisport athletes like Colbey Lamberth, Jesse Stewart, Cade Pilkington, Adam Roth, and Malakhi Redman line this roster.
Each of them is capable of finding success with the level of athletic ability they possess and display.
To top it off, Dickson County does have a guard returning who has shown that he can command the floor and run this team in-game.
Josh Cope comes back another year stronger, faster, and more mentally prepared.
Coach Dodd even went so far as to say “seeing the floor, finding the open man, that is his upside.”
His biggest hurdle according to Coach Dodd will be not playing so “helter-skelter.” Coach Dodd in fact jokingly said, “I told him sometimes to just play ‘helter’.”
All that being said Coach Dodd is “cautiously optimistic” about this season.
One of the biggest reasons is because despite playing a “varsity schedule with a JV age team” according to Coach Dodd “these kids have some skill and some talent. They’re gonna have to adapt to what I do…and I have to adapt to these kids and figure out what works best for them.”
Any coach would tell you, the great ones adapt what they do to the personnel they have.
On the flip side, there are certainly non-negotiables.
For Coach Dodd, one of those is rebounding.
He told me one of his favorite quotes was this ‘offense brings fans, defense wins games, rebounding wins championships.’
He later went on to say from what he has seen so far, this team is not a great rebounding team.
“They don’t block out well, that is something we will hardcore work on,” Coach Dodd said in no uncertain terms.
We could spend a long time talking through all Coach Dodd said.
Suffice to say, it boiled down to this.
He has no real idea what their level of success will be this season, or even how many games they will win.
He does feel confident saying it will be higher than last year’s total of just five but was quick to point out he along with the team are in a “very experimental stage” right now.
I have no real idea how good this team can be.
You will see a team giving 110% that we can count on.
The other thing you can count on is this team putting up points.
Coach Dodd made it abundantly clear, he believes “the highest percentage shots are the shots in the paint and the three.”
So expect to see plenty of shots from the arc and this team working the ball down low for lay-ups.
If you want to hear all Coach Dodd said, you can listen at the link below.
We also will have a schedule where we will keep you updated on results as Coach Dodd tries to make Cubs, Cougars this season.
