Ingredients in place for unified Raiders to continue winning ways as season opener looms

QUINCY — What do the Three Musketeers, DJ Khaled and the Navy SEALs have in common?

They each could be the inspiration for the Quincy Notre Dame boys basketball team this season.

Start with the Three Musketeers. In the legendary novel by Alexandre Dumas, the Musketeers stick together with the motto “Tous pour un, un pour tous,” which translates in English to “All for one, one for all.”

It’s a fitting motto for QND’s seniors, who typically hang out together and are often inseparable. 

“It shows how much we trust each other,” senior point guard Jake Hoyt said. “We’re willing to follow each other anywhere. It translates to the floor in how when someone says something we’re all going to listen and follow them into it.”

The camaraderie creates instant chemistry.

“It’s like playing with your best friends,” senior guard Jackson Stratton said. “There’s a lot of chemistry and a lot of trust there. … There’s a lot of love and a lot of trust.”

That existed before they took the court together.

“We have a really good bond outside of basketball,” senior forward Josh Bocke said. “It’s been our friend group for pretty much our whole lives. We all just happen to play basketball, too.”

The Raiders play with purpose and freedom because of their friendship.

“You know they’re going to have your back and you’re going to have theirs,” Bocke said. “It’s just more fun, too, when you’re playing with people you like.”

Those bonds led to success, which is where DJ Khaled figures in.

The ultra successful record producer and rapper released his single “All I Do Is WIn” in 2010, but it could be the theme song for this group when you look at how success follows them from sport to sport.

Last season, the Raiders went 21-12 and reached the Class 2A sectional championship game. In the spring, the QND baseball team went 32-3 and played for a sectional title. This fall, the QND soccer team won the Class 1A state championship and the football team reached the Class 4A playoffs.

Those four teams combined for a .750 winning percentage.

“We know how a team works to win,” Stratton said. “That’s our biggest advantage with these guys. It’s going to be awesome putting us all together.”

None of them are willing to settle for second best.

“Winning is contagious and losing is contagious,” QND coach Kevin Meyer said. “This is a group of guys that loves to compete all the way across the board. There is a great mindset about competition when it comes to this group. They’re driven. They want to be successful.

“If it’s the classroom, they win. If it’s chess, they want to win. So I firmly believe when they get out here between the lines that their mindset is win. I love that competitiveness.”

No circumstances will change that.

That’s where adapting a mantra from the Navy SEALs could be beneficial. The Raiders need to ignore and override.

They open the season without their top returning scorer and rebounder as Jake Wallingford, a 6-foot-8 senior drawing NCAA Division II recruiting interest, underwent surgery for a torn labrum in his hip early in football season. His return, if possible, isn’t known.

But he’s maintaining a presence with the team, attending practices and being voted one of three team captains along with Hoyt and Stratton.

“Jake’s a tremendous player,” Meyer said. “To have him out puts a little pressure on the other guys. It also lets them create an identity as a group. They just don’t have Jake sitting back at the rim blocking shots. They just don’t have Jake in the middle to score. It’s going to take all of them, and they are more than capable of doing it.”

Braden Sheffield, another senior who started last season, chose not to play this season.

“This team knows how to adapt,” Stratton said. “This team had some struggles last year and a number of different starting lineups until we finally found our fit. So missing guys won’t affect us as much as people think. We know how to adapt.

“If Wally comes back, that’s great. Right now, we have to prepare without him. So we’re putting in new stuff that helps us with a smaller lineup.”

That’s the silver lining. If this team finds a way to be consistent without Wallingford, it gives them more options and more versatility should he return.

“We’ll be ready for Wally whenever he comes back,” Hoyt said. “But it might make the rest of us better learning how to play without him, since he was such a big part of this team last year. It’s going to force some guys to get better.”

First and foremost, that’s Bocke. The 6-foot-4 senior came off the bench last season, but he will start this year and will need to be a presence in the post.

And he knows what he has to do.

“Be physical and stay strong,” Bocke said. “Just work really, really hard.”

That has to be the case on the defensive end.

“We can really get into people defenisvely,” Bocke said. “It’s a bit more of an effort thing. We don’t have the big guy back there to block shots. We have to work more on our positioning. We have to step in and take charges.”

The Raiders are more than willing to be physical and aggressive.

“Playing really good defense,” Stratton said. “It’s what we go off of.”

It’s the “all for one, one for all” that will carry them the furthest.

“What will make us or break us is our team chemistry,” Meyer said. “We have to get to come together as one 13-man team. Building that brotherhood, that family we always try to do will be the key to everything. To be special, they have to get to that ‘we over me’ mentality.

“They have lofty goals. Those goals shouldn’t change because one person is out. We just have to adjust how we’re going to get to those goals.”