Memorial High school started its first basketball season with a win in the Mavericks’ debut against Mineral Wells before losing its second game to Plainview. The Mavs face Lubbock Estacado at 3 p.m. Saturday in their next home contest.
Carter Bien is Memorial’s head coach and he was previously at Wichita Falls High School. The Memorial Messenger sat down with Bein to discuss the Mavericks’ plans for their first season and setting the tone for future ones.
Q: How do you feel about your team going into a new season?
A: It’s a great opportunity with a bunch of guys that are excited to play. It’s a group that cares about each other, and that’s exciting when you have that because you can push them and challenge them to find what they’re not great at together and push through that wall. Because you get a lot of teams sometimes that some people are a little more frustrated about themselves and how they’re playing, but this is a group that when things aren’t going their way, they really think about their teammate and how they can help each other. And that’s something that excites a coach and really pushes me to kind of think outside the box of how we can get this team to the next level. It’s a good group to do it with, so a lot of talent out there we just got to put it together.
Q: What are your expectations for this season?
A: My expectations are to grow every game. This is a group that’s never played together, so really our ceiling is super high. I think you’re going to see a very different team from November to January, and that’s what I tell them every day is that the challenge isn’t to be undefeated come district. The challenge is to be undefeated in district. So I don’t care where we are until January the 10 when we play Abilene Cooper, that’s where I really want to see this team clicking. That’s what excites me. We’ve got some time to go, but we’re going to grow and learn along the way and come together so that way come January, we play some good basketball.
Q: Who are the guys you expect to play a key role?
A: We’ve got a good blend. We got some seniors, Gavin Aday, Jared Cohee, the good leadership coming over from Rider. And then we got some key additions. We got Brady Clark, a great shooter from Old High, and then Jaleel Thomas, a guy that was at City View last year and he’s a great football player coming in. He’s going to be tremendously helping us on the court. You know, he’s strong, he’s a great on-ball defender. And then we got some youth. I talked to the sophomores just how excited I was for those guys to be able to play a big role as sophomores. But we got some great sophomores, we got Dane Gordon, Fyllip Johnson, Nash Melton and McKale Hookfin, and those are all sophomore guys that are going to be thrown to the fire. That haven’t played 5A varsity basketball yet. We got a really good class sophomore group and then we got some key pieces along the way. Joe Castles is coming in from football, we’ve got Frank Schmidt. We got a lot of pieces that are going to come in here and tremendously help us.
Q: How do you feel about being the head basketball coach for the first time at Memorial?
A: So that was the cool part about moving out to Wichita Falls, going to Old High two years ago, getting that head job and just knowing that school was going to close down. And hoping that you could do your job and earn the right for this one. And you know, it’s a really cool feeling now. It’s exciting. There’s a lot of moving pieces, and there’s a lot of I wouldn’t say pressure, but it’s a lot of excitement in and intriguing aspects of a job. Everything’s going to be a first. Everybody’s going to remember the school record at the end of the season. But it’s one of those that in 20 years I think that’s going to be something that I look back on. I was the first ever coach there, and hope that we lay a foundation that in 20 years it’s a school that’s known for their basketball success. Hopefully being able to say that I played a part in building that culture and building that foundation that’s going to hopefully grow on for years to come.
Q: What games and tournaments are you looking forward to?
A: I’m really excited about it all. I’m excited to get out. We’re going to do a stay-away tournament out in Amarillo, we’re going to stay two nights out there the week of Thanksgiving. That’s exciting because it’s always an opportunity for the team to come together. You kind of get people out of their shells and they get to stay in a hotel and do all the fun stuff that kids want to do. And then, obviously district games are all important and everybody’s going to hype up the Legacy game. I like to say it’s just the next game, it’s a nameless opponent and we’re there to do a job and that’s to win, regardless of who it is. It’s always fun to get away and stay away at the tournament, and it’s always fun to play games that kids are excited for. It’s easy to do that in district, but it’s really easy to do that against a rival.
Q: How do you hope to set the tone for future Memorial basketball teams?
A: Kind of what I was alluding to about the excitement of having this first year, it’s going to be what we make of it. I’m a big believer in culture. I’m a big believer in setting an expectation of having players lead, and I give that expectation out to the guys. This isn’t for me, this is for you. This is for the benefit of you guys and how we carry ourselves, how we talk, how we handle and treat our teammates, how we handle officials. That’s what I want to instill in these guys. This is beyond one day, one game. This is something that’s going to benefit how you handle yourself. It’s going to lead to more success on the floor, but off the floor as well. How we handle our emotions, how we handle conflict and adversity and stuff like that. I want to see that growth and it’s sometimes hard in year one, but I think we have the pieces to really see that growth from now to January.
