Countdown to tipoff: Focus switches to hoops at Central with young roster needing to mature

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CAMP POINT, Ill. — Camp Point Central boys basketball coach James Barnett has been through this before.

Fourteen of the 15 players on the Central basketball roster are football players, which means the Central football team’s trip to the Class 1A semifinals — in which the Panthers lost to Belleville Althoff last Saturday — has delayed the start of basketball practices.

This is the Panthers’ third consecutive trip to the final four, so Barnett has learned to adjust.

“When I first got here, I’d plan, then they’d win, then you crumple up all your plans, then you replan, and they win again and you get all worked up and antsy and ready to start the season,” Barnett said. “Finally I just quit doing that. I stayed relaxed, cheered on the team, and when the time comes, we’ll be ready to go.”

Barnett has a blueprint now.

“You almost treat the month of December like June basketball,” Barnett said. “You’re learning as you’re playing. You have games, and you try to teach within the games. We don’t practice hard for the month of December because you’re playing all the time and you want to have rest days. It’s our goal to be in shape by the time we get to the Winchester Tournament (which begins Jan. 11). We feel like if we can be hitting our stride by mid- to late-January, then we’re positioning ourselves for a February run.”

With eight freshmen and just two players — senior Elijah Genenbacher and Kadin Niekamp — who saw significant varsity minutes last season, following that blueprint may prove more difficult than in years past, but as Barnett emphasized, it is impossible to tell without any practices or games under their belt.

“There’s a lot of speculation, a lot of hope, a lot of ‘I think we can get this,’ but at the end of the day, we won’t know until we start practice, start playing in games,” Barnett said.

Genenbacher, the Panthers’ starting quarterback and lone senior on the basketball team, said his basketball work has taken a backseat while the football team makes its run.

“I get a few shots up here and there,” Genenbacher said. “After PE every now and then, we get to shoot a little bit.”

Niekamp, a forward for the basketball team and a former offensive lineman who transitioned to fullback, is in the same boat.

“I try to get some shots up here and there after a workout or something,” Niekamp said.

No matter when the basketball season gets rolling, Genenbacher said pulling the reigns back going from football to basketball can be difficult.

“We always have foul trouble in the beginning just because we’re really rough,” Genenbacher said. “You have to get used to the refs and everything. You definitely do have to hold back a little bit with the physicality.”

If the Panthers can tame that physicality and use it to their advantage, Barnett likes his team’s chances at a third straight regional championship.

“We’ll definitely get back to some more of the physicality roots that we’ve played with in the past,” Barnett said. “Nothing dirty, nothing mean, we’re just going to beat you to the spot. We’re not going to let you cut freely. We’re not going to let you post up where you want to, and we’re going to control the boards. We’re going to try to force teams to chuck it from the cheap seats as much as possible, clean up, get the rebound, and go pound it inside as much as we can on the other end.”

Last winter, Illini Bluffs dashed the Panthers’ hopes at a sectional title for the second straight season with a 47-35 defeat in the Class 1A Abingdon-Avon Sectional championship game. However, with the Tigers’ former 6-foot-9 forward Hank Alvey graduating last spring and playing at Lehigh University this winter, that mountain became much less steep — literally and figuratively — for the Panthers.

“It’s a huge relief that he’s gone,” Genenbacher said. “Hopefully we can make a deeper postseason run.”

The 6-foot, 215-pound Niekamp was tasked with guarding Alvey last year, so he wouldn’t mind another crack at the big man, but he is not necessarily upset that Alvey is no longer at Illini Bluffs.

“I’d like to see him another year,” Niekamp said. “It was fun guarding him. Other than that, I’m glad to see him gone. I’m glad he went D-I, and I’m glad he’s gone at the same time. He’s a heck of a ballplayer.”

As Barnett knows, though, the Panthers will likely have to slay a different dragon — or multiple — to reach the summit.

“There’s always going to be another one out there,” Barnett said. “There’s always going to be a kid that’s the guy. Once you get into sectional play, there’s always somebody. There’s always a great player that’s going to play D1 or D2 college ball, 6-5 or 6-7 or whatever he is. The challenge is while (Alvey) is gone and that challenge is gone, I’m sure there will be another challenge waiting from somebody else that we don’t even know about yet.”

While Niekamp and Genenbacher understand that challenge and are ready to attack it head-on, Barnett said the contributions from other players like sophomore forward Evan Walker, sophomore point guard Kruze Miles, sophomore Briggs Wiskirchen and freshman Luke Ippensen will decide the Panthers’ fate.

“I know what I’m going to get out of (Niekamp and Genenbacher) every single day,” Barnett said. “I don’t want to say we’re only going to go as they go because I think we’re going to be as good as some of our younger guys are going to progress, to be honest.”