Heritage boys hoops just seeking improvement

The Colleyville Heritage boys basketball team has had its share of struggles this season, but coach Stephen Hamrick said his team refuses to give up and said he is proud of the effort he continues to see on a weekly basis.

The Panthers played Haltom on Tuesday night after the press deadline and will travel to Hurst at 8 p.m. Friday to play L.D. Bell.

“The kids at L.D. Bell play awfully hard and their coach does a fantastic job,” Hamrick said. “They are really playing well and getting better. I expect a really good game. It was a close game at our place. Bell likes to play really quick, and we’re going to have to do a good job in transition in defense and protecting the basketball. I feel if we can get some decent stops and rebound the basketball, I think we’ll have a chance to win and be successful.”

Colleyville had a bye on Friday night, but lost a tough one to Trinity by a score of 74-47 last Tuesday to move to 2-5 in district competition.

“I thought we played pretty good for two and a half quarters against Trinity,” Hamrick said. “Going into the fourth quarter, we were down by nine. We had held their leading scorer [Jhivvan Jackson], who averages about 27 points per game, to eight points going into the fourth quarter.

“We just let it get away from us in the fourth quarter. We had to play a little faster than we would have liked, and it led to some easy baskets for them.”

Ke’Von Ahmed led the team in scoring against Trinity with 13 points in the game, while Nico Bossinakis, Michael Hillebrand, Zakary Carroll, Cole Perdok, Noah Prince, Nick Guerra, Bret Minnich and Logan Kari combined for 34 points.

With a 2-5 mark in district competition heading into the Haltom game on Tuesday, Hamrick said the objective is to improve.

“We just want to continue to get better,” Hamrick said. “Being a young group, we want to make new mistakes. We don’t want to repeat mistakes. We struggled on offensive rebounds against Trinity – we want to get that fixed. We want to try to improve in that area and just build, one game at a time and one possession at a time, and just grow.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2016 at 4:06 PM with the headline "Heritage boys hoops just seeking improvement."