Cypress, CA -- Head Men's Basketball Coach Chris St. Clair sat down to talk about the offseason and how the 2013-14 Chargers will improve upon last year's struggles.
Q: How was the offseason?
A: The offseason workouts went fantastic. We had a large staff to be able to get after it, be here and be dedicated. This team had bought in more than I've ever been a part of in all my years of coaching. So I'm super excited with the pre-season.
Q: What are your expectations this year?
A: We do have high expectations. We had a real poor year last season and the group that we brought in, the group that we had red-shirting last year, they have high expectations for themselves and so do we.
Q: How are you going to improve from last year?
A: The thing that we didn't have last year that we do have this year is that we're a much deeper of a team. We're gonna plan on playing 12 guys a game. So we feel that our style of play is going to allow for 12 guys to play hard the whole time and hopefully the other teams will break down during that 40 minutes.
Q: What are your goals this season?
A: Our goal is to make the playoffs. It's been a drought at Cypress for what I believe is 12 seasons now and that's been our goal for a long time. I feel like it's something we can attain this season.
Q: Who is the leader of this year's team?
A: The first person that comes to mind is Jared Cook. He's a redshirt freshman for us. He's a point guard. He's got great qualities. The guys respond to him, the staff responds to him and he responds to us. So definately it's Jared Cook right now.
Q: Who are you expecting to step-up?
A: David Gonzalez is a fantastic shooter. Everytime he shoots the ball, I expect it to go in. It's a shock when it doesn't go in. Then we have Kevin Barnes out of Atlanta, whose been fantastic in the pre-season. He's kind of a mismatch problem for some people because he's 6'6" and can shoot the ball a little bit and post-up a little bit. And then we have the big fellow down below, 7' tall, a little bit inexperienced, but he's seven feet and he's long and he's somewhat athletic, so we're expecting him to be a prescence down low.
Q: Whose going to be your toughest opponent all year?
A: Our conference year in and year out is tops in the state and you could easily argue that. The three tops teams in the past traditionally have been Saddleback, Riverside and Irvine Valley. I've seen two of those three in the summer time and they're very strong and it's going to be fun competing against them because anything could happen in a season like this.
