Scotland Head Coach Michael Malpass feels good about the direction of his team coming off of a down season due to the experience gained by some of his younger players. Here, one of those players, now sophomore Jerrison Dixon (24), shoots a 3-pointer during a game between Scotland and Richmond last season in Laurinburg.
File Photo
LAURINBURG —The Fighting Scots boys basketball team had a good season in 2022-23 that saw them go 19-9 (10-4 against conference opponents) while finishing second in the SAC standings behind only Richmond while narrowly falling to Terry Sanford in the first round of the state playoffs as the No. 8 seed in the east region of the 3A bracket. Last year was a step back in comparison to that season as Scotland went just 9-17 overall (4-9 against SAC teams) while finishing fifth in the conference standings and losing in the first round of the state playoffs once again, this time in lopsided fashion to No. 5 seeded South Central. Despite the regression, Head Coach Michael Malpass feels good about his team’s chances to rebound and the group he has heading into 2024-25 with more experience having been accumulated by his younger players in a trying season a year ago.
“That group two years ago graduated so last year we sort of started over with the young group and had some things happen early in the year and just weren’t able to finish with all of our guys,” Malpass said. “The young guys that stuck it out will be battle tested this year after going through it and I think we’ve got the nucleus to have that second year rebuild and be very competitive and have a good season.”
Malpass will need some of those players to step up this year if they are to enjoy a bounce back season as the program lost three key contributors from last year to graduation in Dylan Lampley, Jaiquez Caldwell and Jonathan Graham. The trio were Scotland’s top three total scorers and rebounders while also being among the top three in numerous other key statistics. Malpass doesn’t anticipate any single player replacing their production but rather sees more of an everybody eats approach where anybody can be the guy at any given moment.
“I think we’ll be a score by committee type of team,” Malpass said. “It’ll be a collective group more this year, we have a lot of guys I think can score 12-15. I’m hoping that’s going to make us a little harder to scout and defend.”
Sophomore Jerrison Dixon is someone Malpass mentioned as a player he sees big things for this season. Dixon averaged 5.9 points per game, 3.6 rebounds per contest and 1.4 assists in 21.1 minutes of action over 18 games during his freshman season. LeSean Pittman and Javeer Pasley are also among the new members of the varsity squad after being brought up from JV. With a lot of new pieces, Malpass is faced with the challenge of meshing it all together into one cohesive unit while also waiting for other contributors that are not yet with the team as the football program remains in the state playoffs such as Shylan Harrell, who shot 51% from the floor and was third on the team last year in points per game (9.3), assists (1.9 per game) and steals (1.3 per game).
“We know now what we have with the guys we’ve had for a couple of weeks,” Malpass said. “Once we see who else is coming and what our other pieces look like, we’ll be able to put the picture together. Right now, we got a group of guys that we feel good about, but we need some more numbers so until we have everybody it’s going to be hard to know exactly what the picture’s going to look like.”
For the time being, Malpass feels good about how the experience acquired in a difficult season will help his team this year. With just nine players currently on the team’s roster, everybody is going to be relied upon to contribute meaningful production right away.
“The key is the guys that finished last year like Shylan Harrell and Jerrison Dixon that were both starters,” Malpass said. “Having those guys back and going through a tough year but staying the course with bright spot moments will help bring up the guys that are new from JV and other guys that have been in our program from previous years that were key contributors.”
The Scots will begin the 2024-25 campaign on Monday night with a home matchup against Montgomery Central. That will be the first of three consecutive home games over an eight-day span for the team to begin the season as they will then host conference rivals Hoke County and Southern Lee on Dec. 6 and Dec. 10, respectively. All three contests are scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. from Scotland High School.