Jul. 9—GREENSBURG — Playing 16 games in June, Greensburg got its first taste of basketball without Lane Sparks.
A staple in the Pirates' offense in recent years, including averaging 25.3 points per game a year ago, Sparks is moving on to play in college, while current players are adjusting to taking on bigger scoring roles.
GCHS coach Stacy Meyer is getting a better sense of how the Pirates will make up the loss of scoring.
"What I'm seeing right now is all of our guys are gonna have to pitch in a little bit more," Meyer said. "It looks like Colin Comer is gonna be our leader, if you will. But we've got four starters back, so that's good. Obviously, losing Lane hurts and his 25 points a game is not easy to replace. But we have experience coming back."
In addition to Comer, other returning starters are fellow seniors Dakota Walters and Brenden Stanley, plus junior Ki Dyer.
Meyer expects sophomore Addison Barnes-Pettit, who was the sixth man last year, will step into the starting lineup.
Jeter Edwards and Abe Tebbe came off the bench and competed in about half of the games last year. They'll be competing for playing time with a handful of guys.
"There are probably five or six guys who will be fighting for those spots," Meyer said, "which makes it good. That competition never hurts."
Coming off a 17-5 season, Greensburg went 13-3 in June games.
The Pirates went undefeated in games played on Monday evenings in Greenfield. They went 2-1 at the University of Indianapolis Shootout, and 2-2 at the Charlie Hughes Shootout in Indianapolis against some quality competition.
"The four teams we played were all really good. To go 2-2, I was pretty pleased with it," Meyer said.
"Overall, I think it was a pretty good June for us."
Comer was Greensburg's second leading scorer last year, averaging 13.7 per game. The 6-foot-2 guard is starting to get attention from college coaches. Meyer said Comer does everything pretty well, and he's very athletic.
"He's put a lot of work into the game and he's seeing some of the benefits of that," Meyer said.
Consistency will be a big key for the Pirates, in addition to defense and rebounding. One concern in particular is depth.
"As we speak, it doesn't look like we're gonna be extremely deep again as a team," Meyer said. "You worry about injury, illness, that type of stuff that could play a role when the season gets going. But I think we'll be competitive again this year."
Greensburg's junior varsity also competed in the Greenfield league, and Meyer said the younger guys did well. It's still four months until the start of the season, so players have time to develop.
"You could have a kid or two that gets better and becomes varsity ready," Meyer said. "I hope that's in the mix and we can bring along a couple of those guys."
The Pirates might also need to adjust how they run their offense — or at least how methodical they are before looking to score. Sparks liked to attack early, which Meyer said was fine because he was good at it.
"I think we did a pretty good job this summer of moving the basketball and kind of using all of our pieces and all of our guys able to play to our strengths," Meyer said. "That was one encouraging thing. There were spots where I was really proud of our guys, the way we moved the ball and shared the ball. If we can continue that, I think we can have a pretty good year."
Andy Scheidler may be contacted at 812-663-3111 ext. 217401 or andy.scheidler@greensburgdailynews.com.
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