Trail Blazers hope experienced, savvy lineup leads to more national success

QUINCY — With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.

Brad Hoyt is counting on the first part of Irish poet Oscar Wilde’s most celebrated adage to hold true. If the second part is more accurate, the veteran John Wood Community College men’s basketball coach might find himself feeling a little more haggard come January.

This will be Hoyt’s oldest and most experienced team when the Trail Blazers open their season at 3 p.m. Friday against the Central Methodist JV in Sedalia, Mo. 

The COVID protocols granting players an extra year of eligibility led to All-American forward Jarvis Jennings and all-conference guard Ja’Veon Taylor returning for a third season. The Trail Blazers also signed three transfers who were looking to use their third year of junior college eligibility to earn a shot at a national tournament berth.

“That age and experience is part of what is going to make this team’s story unique,” Hoyt said.

So will be the fact the Trail Blazers get to experience a traditional Hoyt-designed season.

That means a November and December schedule filled with NJCAA Division I opponents, road trips to some hostile environments and the belief that every setback and every triumph will prepare JWCC to be at the top of Region 24 come March.

Six national tournament appearances since 2014 suggests it works, even if Jennings and Taylor are the only holdovers who have experienced the traditional build-up in the past.

“The spring was a really good experience for them,” Hoyt said of last year’s modified season in which JWCC won the region championship and went to the NJCAA Division II national tournament. “But it’s so different from what this season is going to be. Their eyes are kind of wide open on what a ‘normal’ November will be like.”

Here are three things to monitor as it unfolds ….

Taylor, Trail Blazers chasing opportunity they missed

The Trail Blazers wondered what might have happened had they taken a full roster to Danville last April for the national tournament. A positive COVID-19 test forced Taylor, the shooting guard who was the team’s second-leading scorer at 10.4 points per game, to go into quarantine days before JWCC played its opener.

Without him, the Trail Blazers went two-and-out and left Danville unfulfilled.

Now is the chance to make amends.

Taylor is healthy and in the best physical shape of his college career. Jennings, a first-team All-American forward who averaged 21.5 points per game last season, wants to continue to elevate himself as one of the best players in program history. And the two other returning starters — Brandon Kracht and Gabe Cox — are ready to run.

“They’re asking me to put more stuff in,” Hoyt said. “They want to get through the playbook a whole lot faster. They’re so confident and comfortable in what we do.”

That’s good as long as they are patient enough to bring the rest of the squad along, too.

“We can’t get ahead of ourselves,” Hoyt said. “Everything is a process, and we have to understand how the process works. We’re going to be in some dogfights the next few weeks.”

Addition of size gives Trail Blazers different look

Although Jennings plays bigger than his 6-foot-2 frame suggests, he won’t have to be the inside presence needed to move people off the block if two sophomore transfers — 6-foot-9 Latre Morrison and 6-7 Anglin — develop into key contributors.

Morrison played limited minutes each of the previous two seasons at Johnson County (Kan.) Community College, but the Springfield (Mo.) Parkview product has length, bounce and a presence Hoyt believes can help free up his shooters.

“He’s never been part of a system that’s going to throw him the ball a lot,” Hoyt said. “What we run and what we do, and it’s no secret to anyone who has ever followed us, it really relies on throwing the basketball down there. He’s a big, strong kid who is trying to learn our system.

“He makes us extremely different. I’m hoping that will be a big difference come February and March. It certainly makes us look different.”

Anglin, who is from England, is more of a perimeter threat who is adjusting to the speed of the game, but he will help the Trail Blazers expand the floor.

“If he can catch up mentally as much as he can physically, he gives us an entirely different dimension,” Hoyt said.

Newcomers help stabilize backcourt

Brandon Kracht and Gabe Cox are listed as freshmen on the JWCC roster, but both were full-time starters last season and automatically give the Trail Blazers a leg up in the backcourt. Kracht averaged nine points and made 44 3-pointers, while Cox averaged 4.4 points, 3.7 assists and 3.4 rebounds as the primary point guard.

Toss is Kameron Whiteman, who came off the bench to average 5.4 points and make 37 treys, and the backcourt depth seems solid.

Add freshman guard Jensen Whiteman and sophomore guard Daylon Dalton to that mix and there are some interchangeable parts.

Whiteman is the younger brother of former JWCC guard Gentry Whiteman, who started on the 2019 team that finished sixth at the national tournament.

“Jensen scores it, can play on the ball and is pretty good off it,” Hoyt said. “He’s really kind of cemented himself as someone who is going to get a shot.”

Dalton is a transfer from Southwestern Illinois College who will change the pace at which JWCC plays.

“He’s a jet,” Hoyt said. “He’s a left-handed jet with the ball.”