High School Basketball By RON SNYDER, Staff Writer If St. Mary's wants its boys basketball program to be spoken of in the same breath as its boys lacrosse program the Annapolis school took a step in the right direction with the hiring of Josh Pratt as its new head coach on Wednesday. Pratt, 32, is a teacher at St. Mary's who has spent the last five years as an assistant to Mike Glick at Archbishop Spalding. A former college basketball player at Montgomery College and Division II Newberry College (S.C.), Pratt was also an assistant with Glick while he was at Pallotti in Laurel. At St. Mary's, Pratt, who replaces Roger Reed, inherits a program which is currently a polar opposite from Spalding. While Spalding won the MIAA A Conference tournament and advanced to the Baltimore Catholic League finals, St. Mary's finished with a 7-18 record last season in the less-competitive MIAA B Conference. The year before, the Saints won the B Conference title with a 24-7 record. "I'm excited about finally getting the chance to run my own program," said Pratt, who lives in Crofton. "The challenge right now is to get to know the players who are on the team right now. "I don't want to compete with other sports at the school, but I want the basketball team to be as good as the lacrosse program is. My goal is to eventually get the program into the A Conference. Pratt said he plans on bringing a lot of what he learned under Glick to St. Mary's. "I want to play up-tempo with a lot of zone pressing and aggressive man-to-man defense," Pratt said. "I think the kids here are great and have the potential of being good on a consistent basis." Published April 09, 2004, The Capital, Annapolis, Md. Copyright © 2004 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.