Pirates boys basketball open season against reloaded Dillon

POLSON — Polson boys basketball coach Randy Kelley is using the Missoula Tip-Off Tournament as a barometer to see where his senior-heavy team needs to improve this season.The Pirates will begin their season against Dillon Friday at 3:30 p.m. at the Auxiliary Gym at the University of Montana. The Pirates will play Corvallis at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at at the Adams Center.

“We will kind of use this as a learning tool, and sit there and watch all of the teams in the conference and teams in the Southwest like Hamilton,” Kelley said. “It’s pretty competitive and we will be starting out about as competitive as you can get by playing the best teams in Class-A. Dillon is the defending champs.”

Kelley said he hopes the tournament will expose his team’s weaknesses so they can make the necessary adaptations as the season progresses.

“It kind of works both ways and exposes a few of our weaknesses,” Kelley said. “We started out last year with Dillon. I wish I could play them every weekend if we could and use that as a tool to finding out where our kids are at. We want them to play hard. This will be a good gauge to use as far as where we are at and plus find out where we need to be.”

The Dillon Pirates will return two starters with varsity experience including Tanner Haverfield and Troy Anderson.

“They have two returners but what Dillon does is they just reload (with talent),” Kelley said. “They will play a 1-3-1, a 2-1-3 zone and a 2-2-1 three quarter press against us, and we know what we are going up against. Anderson is signed to play quarterback with the Montana Bobcats and last year really made Dillon go. They just continued to get better as the year went on. Defensively, we are just going to have our hands full to stop those kids.”

According to Kelley, it will be no secret that the majority of the Pirates’ offense will be centered around Matthew Rensvold.

“Rensvold will be coming back and will be our leading scorer,” Kelley said. “I would be kidding myself if everything isn’t going to go through Matthew. We have some pretty good shooters and it will be a process to get some of those shooters some confidence. We would like to have everything clicking by late February.”

Leading the Pirates at point this season will be Jayden Batista. Another senior will be J’von Neimeyer, who will probably see a lot of time at the shooting guard position. Sophomore Shade Main will also provide some depth for the Pirates and is a player Kelley said “would start on most teams in the state.”

Connor Lanier will also play the point guard, shooting guard, and small forward position.

“We are seven players deep and are comfortable with going seven players deep right now,” Kelley said. “We don’t have our basketball legs underneath us yet and aren’t in basketball shape because we had a few players play football, run cross country, and play soccer. We are working hard we just aren’t there yet. The first four minutes of the game (against Dillon) will show us where we are at.”

Against Corvallis, the Pirates will take a different approach than against Dillon, according to Kelley.

“The difference between Dillon and Corvallis is the team will get better as the year goes on and they graduated seven seniors (from last year’s team),” Kelley said. “They have some very good shooters and defenders, and we will have to mix it up defensively a little more. Offensively, we would like to get our running legs, push the ball against Corvallis, and see what we can get done.”