The 2000-2001 boys basketball season started just like any other at Salisbury High School.
A group of players lined up in the gymnasium, put on their “all business” faces reserved for the serious male athlete about to be photographed, and posed for the team picture.
It ran in the Salisbury Post’s basketball preview edition in November. Weeks later, the shot became hopelessly outdated. So much so that a new team picture was taken for the school yearbook.
The Hornets ended their season Tuesday night in the first round of the 2A Central Carolina Conference with just three original members of the varsity squad. Seniors Boo Blount and Randall Jones and junior Chris Geter stood as the lone survivors from a year racked with academic woes, the occasional discipline problem and an abandon-ship mentality.
The 4-18 record?
Easily explained.
Drew Mathews’ job of trying to field a competitive team every night?
A Herculean feat.
“I think Coach Mathews has done a heckuva job this year,”said High Point Central head coach Steve Johnson, whose team beat Salisbury 90-65 in the CCC tourney. “He should be commended for what he’s done this year. He’s one of my votes for coach of the year.”
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Mathews took last season’s Hornet squad to a surprising fourth-place finish in the CCC and a win in the first round of the state playoffs.
In a league dominated by neighbor North Rowan but otherwise weak, similar goals had been set this year.
The Hornets played a light schedule in December, getting wins against South Rowan and Concord and entering the Sam Moir Christmas Classic with a 2-4 record.
But in Salisbury’s first appearance in the event, a mystery lineup took the floor. Several Hornets hadn’t made the necessary grades in the second quarter to keep playing. Even though they remained eligible until report cards came out in early January, Mathews started his rebuilding project immediately.
The familiar names were replaced by sophomores Bryan Roten and Steven Davis and freshmen Julian Greene, Jamar Conners and Jack Campbell.
The learning process proved painful: Salisbury dropped its two tournament games to West and South by a combined 56 points.
Included in a midseason 10-game losing streak was a 75-35 loss at High Point Central and a pair of league losses by 25 or more points. Competing at the varsity level with a bunch of junior varsity or freshman team players can make for plenty of painful nights.
“It’s been a lot of pressure,”Greene said. “You go from freshman, when you’re just playing ball, and you come up here with the big boys. It’s more strategy, you’ve got to play your heart out, really work.”
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Some of the big losses hid fine efforts from the youngsters, though.
Conners scored 13 points in a 73-60 defeat against Central. He had 14 a week later in a nine-point loss to Ledford.
Roten enjoyed his first double-figure scoring game with 10 in a loss to North Rowan. Jack Campbell put in 11 against North Stanly and Greene scored a game-high 19 points against High Point Central in the tournament.
Salisbury’s make-shift lineup even managed two wins in the conference, including a thrilling 91-90 decision against North Stanly, in which Blount scored 33 points but got help from Jones (21) and Geter (10); and a 66-65 victory against East Davidson that saw Geter score 13 points.
“It’s been a great learning experience for the young kids,”said Mathews after Tuesday’s defeat. “I told them tonight, this is probably one of the toughest seasons you can go through as an athlete. They were expecting to be on JV and in the middle of the season they’re on varsity. They learned a lot.”
After all the disappointments and all the losses, Mathews is eager to see what those lessons mean for the future of Salisbury basketball.
“I can’t wait until next season. I wish we had another month now,”he said. “In practice they’re getting better, they’re beginning to understand our offensive and defensive concepts. I just want to keep building on that to where they come back with the same energy we left off with.”
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Between now and the start of next season, the Hornets have a lot of classes to attend and schoolwork to complete. This year, Mathews feels confident that his players will get the job done off the court.
“This group won’t make the mistake my senior class did. They understand,”Mathews said. “And I’ve got a good group of parents that’s behind them, making them do the right thing. For the next couple years, Salisbury High School is going to be something special because we’ve got a good group of kids coming through.”
After watching a team disintegrate right before their eyes, the young Hornets already are taking strides to keep their grades where they need to be.
“We try to push each other up, like if somebody gets a bad grade on a test we’ll take them to eighth period and work on it,”Greene said. “If you have a problem in one class, we’ll have an upperclassmen try to help us. We try to help each other a lot.”
After growing up on the basketball court this season, these Hornets hope to make strides in other areas, as well.
If they succeed, they’ll make Mathews’ job a lot easier next season, and perhaps any Coach of the Year votes can be cast for what happened on the court instead of away from it.
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Steve Hanf covers high school basketball for the Post.
Steve Hanf