Basketball teams start summer improvement projects

Bowie, Gwynn Park among once-young squads with critical time in the future by Adam Gutekunst

Staff writer Gwynn Park High School coach Mike Glick is ready for another summer league of basketball.

In his decades of coaching, Gwynn Park High School boys basketball coach Mike Glick has seen almost everything. He’s coached players that headed to the next level and beyond — even the National Basketball Association — and he’s coached players who barely ever saw the court. He’s watched as experienced, coordinated teams, such as his 2013 team, made runs through the county and he’s watched young, unfamiliar players slowly try to piece together cohesiveness, much like last year’s 10-12 team did toward the end of the season. And while the return of the Yellow Jackets’ top four leading scorers and a year of invaluable experience under their belts certainly carry with it a set of unspoken expectations for next season, Glick’s expectations are unwavering. They were the same last season, when a number of Gwynn Park’s main pieces had never before played together, as they have been every year. “The expectations never change in our program,” Glick said. “Our expectations every year is to try and get to the final four and to try to win a state championship.” The path there begins in the offseason, where Glick’s group has already begun to make some noise, following an 8-1 performance in the Riverdale Baptist spring league that included teams such as Douglass, Largo, Riverdale Baptist and Potomac — most of whom will also compete in the Crusaders’ summer league. But Glick said he’s learned not to put too much stock in his team’s performances in spring and summer leagues. Sometimes success in the offseason has translated into regular season success, but it hasn’t just as many times. Instead, the Gwynn Park coach said, offseason play is more when he looks for his team to develop a togetherness they hadn’t had in seasons before. “It’s all about getting better,” Glick said. “I think everyone realizes that when you play a majority of juniors and the next season they all become seniors, [there’s] unwritten expectations … When kids have a chance to play together, they develop a cohesiveness … During the spring, summer, and fall, we’re trying to mesh those kids playing together and get them all on the same page.” A byproduct of that experience, Glick hopes, is more scoring. The young Yellow Jackets struggled to put points on the board last season, but will have plenty of offensive firepower returning in 2015-16. Rising junior point guard Justin Jackson will make the jump to varsity after directing a very talented junior varsity team from a year ago. Under Jackson’s orchestration, expect versatile senior Isaiah Miles (13.2 ppg) and long-range threat Marlon White (9.5 ppg) to thrive. Fellow senior Aaron Parker will also return next season for Gwynn Park, but will only do so when football season comes to an end. Still, Glick and company have the pieces in place for a significant turnaround from 2014-15. “I think we’ll be dramatically improved,” Glick said.

agutekunst@gazette.net