Coaches Corner for February 19th: Rusty Hicks, Boone Boys Basketball

With us on Coach's Corner on KWBG, gonna talk Boone boys basketball, Rusty Hicks joins us. The Torreadors, one more regular season game left with Webster City, and then they'll start post-season against Gilbert on Monday. Rusty, I know the schedule's been like this forever.

Does it feel nice still to get that one more game before the post-season, just to make sure you're not too rusty going in and having a week off? Yeah, I think it's really good.

I think years ago, the pass coaches, I think, set it up like this Monday, Thursday schedule with the tournaments in mind that you start the first round on a Monday, and then if you win that, you're in the district final on a Thursday.

So it kind of matches up with tournament play.

So for sure, I think it's great to play these two games this week, and hopefully go out the regular season the right way, and go up to Webster, and play well, and get a win, and then I think that's good momentum heading into the first round of districts starting next Monday.

So I think it's a great thing. We'll talk more about Webster City here in just a second, but I want to know your thoughts, Rusty, when the brackets came out and you had a chance to face somebody.

Granted, it will be for the third time this season, but a team that have been really competitive games with you and Gilbert. Yeah, you know, you just try to guess and think about what'll happen with CDing, and you know what?

I thought we'd be around that seven line, and then it shows up that we're on the sixth line there, playing the three-seated Gilbert, and yeah, for sure, you know, we've had two really good games against them, and I think that's a good thing, and I think hopefully that'll give the guys some confidence, like hey, you know, we played these guys tough twice, I think we have an opportunity, and you know that I will say this, but I think the second time we played them at home, man, that was a great game.

I think we're up two, it probably, might've been like under a minute, 50 seconds, we had the ball, we had a shot right at the basket that we just missed, that would've put us up four, and they go down, and I think they hit a three, so now they're up one, we come back, miss a shot, they go back down, make a shot, and now I think they're up three, I think it is, or whatever, and we get the ball on its side out, and then we turn it over, and then they end up winning the game, so you know, I feel like the guys and myself feel like that game, we let that one slip away, so I think definitely, I think the guys should have plenty of confidence to go to Gilbert next Monday, and so they can compete and give themselves a chance, and maybe come out on the right end of things on the first round.

I was telling Coach Hoover the other day, I said it kind of feels like a few years ago, at the standard winner's senior year, we played winners that really close twice, could've won full-time, and just two heartbreakers against them, and then we draw them in the first round, I think it was a three-six game, too, a few years ago, and we went down to winners' set, and finally ended up a third time with the charm, and ended up beating them in the first round of districts, said it kind of feels like that, and hopefully, maybe ends up with the same result as that year, too.

Rusty, obviously you've had two scouting reports on Gilbert, do you keep the same scouting reports? Do you throw them out and kind of do a brand new one? How do you kind of approach that?

Yeah, I think we'll take some things we did, we'll go back and watch those two games, and take some things we think worked on both sides of the ball, but definitely go back to the drawing board and watch some of Gilbert's more recent games against some of their opponents, and see if there's anything we think we can do differently, and anything we think we can do differently on either side of the ball.

So definitely some of the old, and then possibly maybe get some new stuff based on the games that they played, because obviously, that was, by the time we'd have planned, that'll be almost a month ago, so some things change.

Gilbert's gonna do what Gilbert does, they're not gonna really deviate from what they do most of the time, maybe they will here in the first round district game, you never know.

But yeah, I'd say we'll just watch the last two games, we play them, and then watch some of the recent games, and we'll just go from there, and start putting the scout in on Friday.

I know I talked to Rusty about this off air, and I said, okay, listen, I know Webster City is still on the schedule, Gilbert of course the most important game.

You told me though, Rusty Webster City's pretty important, you wanna make sure you guys go up there and end the regular season on a big, well on a high note, and kinda go into Gilbert with momentum.

Yeah, for sure, we feel like here the second half of the season, especially down the stretch, we've left some wins out there, and we've played some really competitive games, and been right there, and it's just been a few things here or there, or a quarter here that we just didn't do some things the way we were supposed to, and it caused us to gain, and we feel like we've left some wins out there, so we definitely feel like this Webster City game's important, and we wanna go up there, and we wanna play well, and we wanna come back, and hopefully with a win, and then head into next Monday with some good momentum, and confidence, and going to Gilbert on Monday, thinking that we can go there and come out with a win.

For sure, I think it's a really important game for us tomorrow.

I know you've run into a little bit of sickness here to end the season, so Rusty, I'll ask you about this real quick, health-wise, and whether it be sickness or injury-wise, how do we look going into these last couple?

Yeah, I think for the first time in basically all year, yeah, I think we're finally healthy with regards to injury, and of course this time of year, there's always some lingering stuff with guys, but that doesn't really bother them, they just fight through it, and with the sickness, we had some sickness run through the team the last couple weeks, and I think finding we are at full strength and full health, and hopefully that'll help us here Thursday, and hopefully that'll help us on Monday.

I think Coach Hoover and I were talking, I think we figured the whole season from November, middle of November, until now, I think we've had everybody healthy, and everybody at practice for maybe a week and a half. Wow.

And finally, we're getting guys all together, all practicing together, and then all playing together, so I think that can only benefit us moving forward for sure. Probably feels weird having all those guys on the practice court then, doesn't it? Right, right.

Having everybody there and healthy and not having to figure out where you're gonna plug and play or plug and practice, and it's definitely nice, and you have everybody available for sure. Nah, no doubt.

Rusty, as always, thank you so much for some time, best of luck tomorrow night, I'll see you Monday in Gilbert. All right, thanks Ryan. You've got Rusty Hicks again joining us, Boom Boys Basketball here in Coach's Corner.