Marysville’s Jarrett Karnes (left) pressures a West Carrollton ballhandler during Saturday morning’s scrimmage at Thomas Worthington. Defense has been a big emphasis for the Monarchs during the preseason.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Tim Miller)
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The preseason attention for the Marysville High School boys basketball team hasn’t necessarily been on who can put points on the board.
It’s been mainly about the prevention of numbers by the other guys.
“Our focus has been on defense,” said MHS head coach Ryan Grose after Saturday morning’s scrimmage sessions at Thomas Worthington High School.
The Monarchs faced a variety of opponents during two-quarter scrimmages that each lasted 10 minutes.
Marysville competed against, among others, Elida, Warren JFK, West Carrollton, Thomas Worthington and Olentangy Orange.
“With each scrimmage, we’ve gotten better with our defense,” said Grose, who is beginning his eighth season at the Monarch helm. “We’ve improved with our defensive rotation, pressuring the basketball and help-side defense.”
Saturday’s schedule was the next-to-last preseason date for the Monarchs, who will scrimmage at Ottawa-Glandorf on Wednesday.
Marysville previously scrimmaged against Columbus Briggs, Teays Valley and Bishop Watterson.
Grose said there weren’t any particular player or players who stood out during the three-hour scrimmage session.
“What I like about this team is that we have a lot of guys who are good at a lot of things,” he said. “We won’t have to rely on just one guy to score points or play defense.”
The Monarch boss said he likes the fact that he has several players such as Jarrett Karnes, Marshall Francisco, Bodie Eberhart and Jack Christian who could score 20 points on any given night.
As the team is still in the preseason stage, Grose said there are areas that remain to be tweaked.
“It’s mainly on the offensive side of the ball,” he said. “We have to figure out what we need to do when we don’t have good looks at the basket. We don’t want to settle for shots that aren’t so good.
“We have to figure out the defensive mismatches and get the ball to where it needs to go.”
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