By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The South High Cougars boys basketball team is off to an explosive start, beginning the 2020-21 campaign 10-0 and ranked as the #2 team in 5A.
That record isn’t a fluke either, as the Cougars have taken on some of the toughest teams in the state, including an Andover team that many considered to be the team to beat in 5A.
“I think their unselfishness has been the biggest key for us so far this year,” Cougar head coach Jason Hooper said. “We have an extremely veteran group with a lot of kids who have played a ton of basketball for us. They’ve been through the battles, they know what it takes and that’s been the biggest difference maker for us.”
That veteran group, featuring a rotation of six seniors and one sophomore, has stifled opponents this season, outscoring the ten teams they have faced by a combined 136 points.
The Cougars are led by Devon Junghans and Josh Jordan, who combine for 26 points per game on average, with a solid supporting cast backing them up.
One of the members of that cast is sophomore Tejon McDaniel, who has burst onto the scene this year, and is the lone non-senior seeing big minutes this season.
“He’s really exceeded my expectations,” Hooper said. “We knew that he was going to be a really good athlete but for a sophomore he’s been doing a great job of doing all of the little things we need done in the course of a game.”
A part of what makes this Cougar offense so lethal is the spread out scoring throughout the season. Anyone on this team can break out on any given night, making South High a nightmare matchup defensively.
“Night in and night out you don’t know who our leading scorer is going to be,” he said. “You kind of have to pick your poison with us. We have good perimeter shooters, we have good post play, we’re athletic and it all starts on the defensive end for us.”
While the Cougars record remains unblemished, the team is still striving towards getting better every day, playing their best basketball for more and more minutes each game.
“Early in the season we definitely had quarters or halves where we played really well but there were also quarters where I didn’t feel like we were playing up to our capabilities,” Hooper said. “I feel like in the last few games we’ve really really played four solid quarters of basketball and if we can continue to do that down the stretch we’re going to find a lot of success.”
The remaining road for Salina South will include some of its best opponents yet, including back-to-back contests with 10-2 Maize, and two games against 9-1 Haysville Campus.
“We need to stay hungry and continue to improve,” he said. “We can’t be satisfied with what we have right now. We know the goals that we have for the end of the season and we need to keep chasing them.”
The Cougars will be back in action on Tuesday when they will look for the season sweep of their cross-town rival in Salina Central.