RED SPRINGS — The beginning of the boys basketball season has been different for the Red Springs Red Devils than any other team in Robeson County.
With around half the team also playing varsity football — and the gridiron Devils advancing to the second round of the state playoffs before their elimination on Friday — those players were not able to play on the basketball court.
Red Devils coach Glenn Patterson opted not to move the team’s two games last week to a later date, but instead played to give some of his other players who are normally further down the depth chart the opportunity for some significant minutes against quality competition.
“That’s why I wanted to play, because it gives them an opportunity to show me they’re prepared for this,” Patterson said. “And I talked to them and I tried not to be to hard on them because they were thrown into the fire. I think it’ll be valuable down the stretch.”
The Red Devils lost their three leading scorers from last season, but everyone else who played significant minutes returns. As the Red Devils get the rest of their team back from football, it will be a unit with some depth and athleticism.
In he frontcourt, Corell Love can play on the inside or outside, and feature size with Zieric Ferguson, Chandler McMillan, Corey Newton and Keyante Graham.
“We’ve got a lot of options that we can choose; we just want to run our set. We’ve got a lot of sets we can run through the bigs first,” Patterson said. “We want to run through the inside-out first, and see what happens through those guys. At the 2A level, that’s a pretty big ballclub.”
Traveze Billinger and Jordan Ferguson, a pair of speedy guards, will lead Red Springs in the backcourt.
“Traveze is lightning-quick, Jordan Ferguson is lightning quick,” Patterson said. “Pressure won’t bother us and we’ll get a lot of easy baskets with those guys in the jerseys. Traveze is quick enough and smart enough to break the press and make it up the court.”
The Red Devils lost two lopsided games last week, to Lumberton and Terry Sanford, without their football players, then suffered a 77-51 defeat in those players’ first game back on Monday. Red Springs’ next game will be their conference opener at South Columbus on Dec. 3.
