Newcastle returned to the basketball court for a new season last week with a 59-25 win against Chickasha. The win came with the Racers sharing the point scoring and exhibiting a tough defense.
Their dominance was a good sign for the new season, as last year’s Racers team saw a lot of success, making it to the quarterfinals of the State Playoffs before losing to Weatherford and ending their season. Weatherford continued to the State Finals but lost to State Champion Douglass.
Coach Jessie Brown said he is excited about this year’s team. Brown returns to the helm for his sixth year as the Racers’ head coach.
The 2023-24 Racers only have one senior on the team, Bobby Burrell, having lost three to graduation last year. Those players were All-State Honorable Mention Chase Sucharda, who was also All-Conference, Connor Boydstun, who received All-Conference Honorable Mention, and Nathan Ashley, also an All-Conference Honorable Mention.
Brown said his returning starters include Antonio Brown and Zach Cragg, both juniors. He said other players he expects to see playing time this year are Alan Price, Chris Brinlee, Jon’Tre Sloan, and Rex Heskew.
Weston Lightle, and Preston Scagnetti.
Against Chickasha, Newcastle came out quick and put up 51 points while holding their opponent to only 17 points.
After that, Brown was able to test out some of his newer players, and then finished the game with the 59-25 score.
Brown said the Racers played hard and very fast defensively.
Cragg and Sloan had 10 points each, and Sloan had 11 rebounds. Antonio Brown and Heskew had nine points each, and Burrell had eight. Brinlee added six points. Coach Brown said he had 16 players on the roster, and everyone scored except one. Brown said the Racers ran a couple of different defenses against Chickasha and will continue to do the same throughout the year.
“They do a good job of holding the opponents to about 41 points per game,” Brown said. “That’s our average over the last five games. We have kept the opponent to about 44-45 points per game overall.”
The Racers run a man-toman defense, and also a tacline defense with a lot of pressure, including some full court pressure.
Offensively, the Racers are running an open continuity offense with motion.
“We run some horn sets to get kids in different spots,” Brown said.
“We want to play fast and physical, but it depends on who we are playing,” Brown said.
Brown said, “We ask the people to come out and support us. We have a good program here, and we have a lot of talent coming up.”
