The McCallum varsity boys basketball team has a record of 11-12 with two games left in the regular season. After losing its first two games of the year, including a close 62-60 overtime loss against St. Andrews, the team bounced back to win eight of their next 11 games. Four of those 11 games happened during the Marble Falls Subway Classic, a tournament in which Knights went 3-1, including an uplifting 69-63 win over Hendrickson.

“[Hendrickson is] a big 6A school, and everybody [there] doubted us,” senior point guard Kenneth Hall said. “They thought we would lose.”

Head coach Daniel Fuentes believes the Knights’ 56-54 win over Dripping Springs in the Hays Rebels Classic was another important win for the team this season.

“We beat some great teams,” Fuentes said. “We beat Hendrickson at a tournament. We also beat Dripping Springs, which was a team that went five rounds in the playoffs [last year]. Those have been two of our biggest wins this year.”
The start of January, however, brought a five-game losing streak for the Knights.

“I think we performed pretty good throughout the first [part of the season] and the second [part] we [came] out a little slow and sluggish, and it’s kind of [caused] us to lose [more] games,” Hall said.

Since that five-game skid, the Knights have gone 3-2 in their last five games, putting them at 11-12 for the season. The Knights next game is against LBJ on Friday, followed by their last game of the season on Feb. 13 at Austin High. That game against Austin High will most likely determine which team will get fourth place and earn the final spot in the playoffs.

No matter how the Knights finish the year off, the team has shown it has improved a lot since last season when they went 5-26. Coach Fuentes gives a couple of the players who weren’t on the team last year some of the credit for the improvement.

“[Hall] wasn’t here last year, so it’s nice to have him as a point guard,” Fuentes said. “He makes life easier for everybody else. Norman Boyd is a leading scorer this year. I don’t know if anybody would have guessed that, but he’s definitely shown that he can play at the varsity level. And then just a combination of all those guys contributing, whether they’re starters or coming off the bench. Hopefully they have bought into the mentality that it doesn’t matter who the leading scorer is as long as we get the result at the end of the day.”

Fuentes also believes better teamwork has helped the team improve this season.

“I think the chemistry, the group of seniors that we have, they really get along,” Fuentes said. “Their confidence has started to come around, and their trust is starting to come around. It’s not one guy’s team or two, it’s a collection of everybody together, so I think that’s contributed to us having a better year so far.”

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The group of seniors that we have, they really get along,” Fuentes said. “Their confidence has started to come around, and their trust is starting to come around.

— Head coach Daniel Fuentes

The Knights will try to continue improving next year as well, but it may be a much more difficult task given the large amount of seniors who are currently playing their last season.

“I only have two guys returning,” Fuentes said. “I have Norman [Boyd] returning, and I have Sam [Werkenthin]. That’s it. So it’s going to be a combination of those two juniors and probably a bunch of sophomores.”

Sophomore guard Sam Werkenthin is still optimistic for an even better season next year, though.

“It will definitely be different, because there [will be] a lot more new people coming up to varsity,” Werkenthin said, “but I think it will be different in a good way,”