Published: October 28, 2009 08:21 am      

Coyotes bring talent and youth to 2009-10 squad

WC Press Release

Young and hungry. Those two words summarize the 2009-10 Weatherford College Coyote basketball team in the eyes of head coach Dave Donnelly.

“We have twelve new players, and ten of them are freshmen,” Donnelly said. “This is a young and talented group that’s getting better every day.”

The second-year head coach is confident that his team will fare better than last year’s squad, which struggled late in the conference schedule. But only two returners are back from that team, so for this year, it’s a blank slate.

“We have strength, size and good quickness and shooting on the perimeter. We have an inside and an outside attack, and these guys come from good basketball programs. Our weakness is inexperience. ”

The lion’s share of college experience rests in Donnelly’s guards. Kendall Durant returns as WC’s top player from last year, a first-team All-Conference selection who averaged 14.9 points per game. Sammy Yeager, a transfer from Modesto Junior College in California, averaged 29 points a game as a senior at Modesto High School. Freshmen Darious Jones (Ft. Worth Dunbar) and Thaddeus Showers (Hammond, LA) will split time at point guard, both coming from state tournament-caliber programs.

Size won’t be a problem this year at WC. The frontcourt includes returner Aron Walker, a 6-foot-10 forward that suffered a season-ending eye socket injury early last year. Beas Hamga, a seven-footer originally from Cameroon, comes as a highly-touted transfer from UNLV. Big-bodied Samuel Davis (6-foot-9, 315 lbs.) will also see time under the basket.

Donnelly says the competition in the North Texas Junior College Athletic Conference will be even tougher this year, with stronger teams from top to bottom. And it’s no secret that Region V is a beast.

“This is the toughest region in junior college basketball. Over the last three years, the Region V champion has won the national championship twice and a runner-up finish last year.

The tough schedule can be a grind, but Donnelly says he has depth on his side this season, going two deep at every position.

“On paper, we’re about as complete as a team can be. It will come down to how quickly these guys learn the system and understand the effort that it takes on a daily basis to compete at a high level.”