Published: December 03, 2008 04:12 pm      

One goal for Roff

'Sky's the limit' for Simon's Tigers

Roff — Anything less than a championship at this week’s Pontotoc Conference Tournament will be a disappointment for second-year Roff boys basketball coach Kale Simon and his talented squad. But everyone associated with the Tiger program is already looking forward to a more important tournament three months from now.

Roff, No. 8 in Class B in the first CoachesAid rankings of the 2008-2009 season, made an unlikely run to the state tournament last March in Simon’s first season at the school — unlikely because the Tigers had four sophomores in their top six players and just one (guard Dayne Parker) who was a full-time starter the year before.

This season, Simon welcomed back Parker and fellow juniors Aaron Cornell, Josh Jones and Blake Logan, and expectations for his second Roff squad went from high to “sky’s the limit” when forward Dylan Lemley moved in from Sulphur and guard Brendan McCurry moved from Tupelo this summer to join the Tigers’ talented returning nucleus.

“Last year, we set a foundation, and this year we get to decide what kind of house we want to build,” Simon said. “We have plenty of hammers and plenty of nails — we just have to get the job done.”

The “job” Simon and his club are facing is not only a return to the Class B state tournament but, perhaps, a return to the championship game — something Roff squads did in Class A in 2004 and 2006 with teams that, on paper at least, weren’t as deep or talented as the current group of Tigers.

Things didn’t start quite the way Simon had hoped this season, however. Roff lost is opener to Vanoss (the second seed at the conference tournament), then, after winning two in a row, absorbed a 19-point loss to Class B No. 3 Stringtown in the Tigers’ first meeting with a ranked team this season.

Since then, though, Simon’s club has been very impressive. Roff throttled old rival Latta, 64-40, just three days after the Stringtown debacle, and the Tigers manhandled a good Dale squad, 54-37, Tuesday in their final prep for the conference tournament.

“I told my assistant coaches going into (the Stringtown game) that we weren’t ready for it, and I still don’t think we’re ready for it,” Simon recalled. “I though we would compete better than we did, but it was one of those games where (Stringtown) shot better and defended better than we did. That made it a long night, but I definitely think the gap will narrow.

“We’ve still got work to be done, but I think the Stringtown game was a necessary evil,” he said. “It was something that made us open our eyes and realized just showing up wasn’t going to be good enough. We have to show up every night and play our best and play our hardest.”

Simon said playing three solid games at Vanoss this week — starting with Monday’s (6:20 p.m.) contest with a struggling Wanette squad — will be a good start toward the consistency he is hoping to establish over the remainder of the season.

“We just want to make sure we are getting better every night,” he said. “Whether we’re playing somebody who’s really talented or somebody who’s not, we want to make sure we’re winning basketball games and winning them the right way.”

After struggling in the losses to Vanoss and Stringtown, the defense that was a Roff trademark last season and over the previous five years under Darrick Farriell and Larry Johnston re-emerged in the victories over Latta and Dale. The Tigers outscored the Panthers, 23-2, in the first quarter, then came back to dominate the Pirates, 19-5, over the first eight minutes Tuesday.

“We’re just emphasizing playing as a unit,” Simon said of the reason for the recent turnaround. “We’re blessed with some really good basketball players, and we’re got two or three kids who could average 20 points on another team. We’re not going to have anybody who is going to average 20 points, and we’ve got to learn to share the ball and play as a team.

“We got a late start coming out of baseball (McCurry, Parker, Cornell and Logan were all starters on the Roff squad that advanced to the Class B title game in May for the third straight season), and we didn’t get a lot of chance to work on our defense,” he added. “Lately, we’ve been getting a lot more repetitions and it’s starting to show. We have to learn we only get to play with one basketball. It all goes back to understanding your role and executing that role.”

Although McCurry — who averaged 13 points per game for Tupelo as a sophomore — has struggled in Simon’s system and has yet to score in double figures through six games, Lemley has been an impact player since the season opener. The 6-2 sharpshooter is averaging almost 14 points per game, including a season-high 25 against Latta, and, despite scoring a season-low five points against Dale, he pulled down a game-high nine rebounds.

“Dylan is a great kid, he’s a hard-working kid, and he’s extremely unselfish,” Simon said of Lemley. “He’s not going to force his way into anything. He’s still trying to find his niche on this ballclub. He doesn’t want to step on anybody’s toes, but he has to be more aggressive.

“Brendan shoots the ball extremely well,” Simon noted. “We run a pretty complex system, and it’s taken a while for him to get into the flow of things. He’s still having to think about what’s he’s doing, and it’s going to take a little time before he can use his gifts and get comfortable in our system.”

When McCurry hits his scoring stride, he and Lemley both figure to be key contributors in an offense that is potentially as explosive as any in the state.

Jones, a first-team All-Area selection as a sophomore (when he averaged 16 points per game), has scored in double figures four times in six games and is averaging 11.5 points per outing; Parker scored a season-high 23 points in the Dale victory and, like Lemley, is average just under 14 points a game; and Cornell, the team’s point guard, has also been a consistent scorer, averaging nine points per game and leading the club in assists.

Despite a drop in Jones’ scoring so far this season, Simon said his 6-3 junior center is still the team’s first option every time down the floor.

“Josh is as big a part of the offense as he was last year,” Simon explained. “Instead of having two dynamic scorers, we now have three, so everybody’s points per game are going to go down. With a team that has as many options as we have, that’s part of it, but when Josh touches the ball, good things happen for us. We really concentrate on working the ball inside out.”

While Lemley and Jones figure to give Roff its best 1-2 scoring punch inside in years, McCurry joins a backcourt rotation with Parker and Cornell that has the potential to also rank with the best in school history.

“Dayne is a junior now, and he understands he’s definitely a go-to guy,” Simon said. “We have to get him going where he’s consistent on a nightly basis. He’s a great athlete.

“Aaron is what I call our X-factor — he’s what makes us go,” he said of Cornell, who is also one of the area’s top defensive players. “When he’s good, we’re good; when he’s not, we’re not. Defensively and offensively, he’s very basketball-intelligent. He’s probably the smartest defensive player I’ve coached as far as thinking ahead. He’s a pleasure to coach. He’s our glue.”

Although Logan — who was the team’s sixth man a season ago but has moved into the starting lineup as a junior — hasn’t scored more than four points in a game this season, Simon said the versatile 6-1 forward provides a lot of positives that don’t show up in the box score.

“Blake is very versatile defensively — he can guard a post guy or a guard,” Simon noted. “We match him up on the other team’s best player a lot of times, and he enjoys that role. He’s done a good job of accepting his role.”

Six-deep, Roff appears capable of matching up with any small-school squad in the state; Simon said, however, that he hopes to develop some additional depth as the season progresses. At this point, senior Caleb Burrows, junior R. T. Stoup and sophomore T. J. Carter are the leading candidates for playing time.

“We’re going to go deeper than six,” he predicted. “I just don’t know who that is yet, but it will be whoever works on a daily basis and gets better. We have a chance to go eight or nine-deep.”

The conference tournament is just the first step in a demanding December schedule that will see Roff play road games against Stratford — which is led by reigning Area Player of the Year Dalen Qualls and drops from Class 2A to A this season — and Class B No. 1 Red Oak (at the McAlester Expo Center) just two days apart on Dec. 16 and 18. After the Christmas break, the Tigers will face Class B No. 7 Mill Creek and a rematch with an improving Latta squad that handed Vanoss its first loss of the season (69-60) Tuesday night.

“We’ve got enough challenging games that we have to be ready on a consistent basis,” Simon said. “You can’t control your conference schedule, and we just try to schedule the toughest out-of-conference games we can.”

During Simon’s first year at Roff, the Tigers improved steadily as the season progressed and, in the end, earned the school’s fifth state tournament berth in six years. Simon said this year’s squad is deeper in both talent and experience, but because of the expectations attached to the team, the challenge is still there.

“I don’t want to compare years, but last year was fun,” he said. “We had some kids who had some work to be done, and we had to mold those kids.

“This year, it’s exciting that we’re as talented and gifted as we are. We have one goal, and it’s reachable if we come and put in the time.”