Coast Union returns 7 from last year’s league champion

Coach Tim May certainly has the right to feel a surge of confidence as the Broncos prepare to enter the 2016-17 varsity boys basketball season. In his core group, he has the same seven players — six of whom were juniors — from the team that went undefeated (10-0) in the Coast Valley League with last season.

This is essentially the same team that won a nail-biter, 45-42, in a first-round CIF Division 5A playoff game against AGBU on Feb. 17, 2016.

As the team launches into regular evening practices (6:30 to 8:30 p.m.) for the 2016-17 season, May has twins Jack and Sam MacKinnon, Riley Kennedy (the only junior), Roberto Cueva, Nick Roper, Auggie Johnson and Jez Lawson, who led the 2015-16 team by averaging 14.2 points and seven rebounds per game.

The coach appreciates evening practices because, he says, “This is the time we play our games, so it gets us in the right mindset of a game for every practice.”

In addition to the six previously mentioned returning players, May has fleet football running back Alam Ramirez out for basketball; he has David May out (who is practicing with the team but has not officially made the varsity yet); and a newcomer to Coast Union, Thor Ronemus, who will make varsity but is recovering from an ankle injury.

Since the 2011-12 basketball season, Coast Union has won 50 and lost only three games in the CVL. May said in an email interview: “I like where we are at this point defensively,” albeit, as to the team’s readiness offensively, “we are a bit raw and we have added some new players, so it will take some time to iron out the deficiencies.”

The team has adopted a motto for the 2016-17 season: “ALL IN,” a message May likes because it “affords itself multiple interpretations and applications throughout the season.” Practice is vitally important for the senior-dominated Bronco team, because “I want them to put all their energy and effort into the drills because, as I constantly remind them, this is the last day they will do this.

“There’s no going back,” May emphasized. And so far in this early preseason, “we are firing on all cylinders,” a healthy situation less than a month before Coast’s first nonconference games in early December at the Morro Bay Basketball Tournament.

This story was originally published November 9, 2016 at 9:51 AM with the headline "Coast Union returns 7 from last year’s league champion."