Charlo basketball hopes to capitalize on team speed

Newly appointed Charlo boys basketball coach Reese Cox is aware speed is one of the best weapons to exploit in any sport.

Cox, who replaced former Vikings’ coach Gale Decker, is also aware he has an abundance of speed as he looks to formulate a roster as the first official day of practice nears closer and closer for his Charlo club.

He also is aware he will have to take advantage of all of his team’s attributes in order for his team to qualify for the Western Class C Divisionals in a conference that has the defending state champion Arlee Warriors.

“I am not entirely set on my roster yet but I know I (tentatively) I will have eight returning from last season,” Cox said. “Right now, I have about eight players that will play at the varsity level and they’ll be ready to go.”

With a smaller team Cox also understands that he will have to rotate his roster in order to keep them fresh for the entire 32 minutes of the game.

“There will be a lot of circulation time and I will have to set a lot of time for my entire roster,” Cox said. “Kind of the way I see it is everyone in our conference is battling Arlee for that top spot. They have Phillip Malatare returning, and Mestes and Whitesell. They will have a lot of experienced and good ball players. Everyone is going to try to give Arlee their best game.”

Because of the competitive dynamic created by having the No. 1 ranked team in the state in your conference and Plains, who was rated No. 1 for nearly half of last season until they lost to Arlee, Cox knows who he will have to beat in order to earn that final spot.

“We are going to have to fight for that last spot against us and Plains,” Cox said. “We are going to have to bring our team and our kind of program and that is something that is pretty new. There aren’t a lot of complex defenses out there that I’ll use that other teams around here don’t see a lot of. We are going to use some really complex and high end stuff that several teams across the state haven’t seen as much of.”

Over the last five seasons, Cox has worked his way up from a volunteer assistant to assistant coach to now his first full time gig as the Vikings’ coach.

“I’ve been an assistant coach, I used to play basketball for Western Montana and in Superior I was kind of volunteer coaching the boys and girls basketball teams,” Cox said. “Then, the next year I turned into a student-coach at Western University. The last two seasons I was an assistant at Twin Bridges for both the boys and girls team. My boys won the district when they came from and took fourth in Western Divisionals and lost a heart-breaker to Manhattan Christian.”

Cox also was an assistant on the Lady Falcons’ team that finished third in the Class C girls basketball team at the end of the 2016-2017 campaign.

During the football season, Cox said he saw the potential of his basketball team.

“I had a little meeting with my team during one of the breaks and during school to see what I had for numbers and who is going to turn out,” Cox said. “I finished the meeting emphasizing ‘you guys are incredibly fast and we have to take advantage of that with our defense that we instill.’ I want to play a lot in transition and look at how athletic and fast we are. There is no reason why we can’t make a deep run at playoffs and play at Hamilton. There is also no reason why we couldn’t achieve that if everyone jumped on board. ‘Why not us?’”

Cox expressed his long-term commitment to the Vikings’ basketball program.

“I really would like to be here and keep Charlo on the map and have people say ‘no one can hang with us because we are just dominating every sport,’” Cox said. “I would like to make an honest push for state in the next four years. We have a group of kids that can make an honest run. I would like to do a lot of work with the elementary school kids. I’ll always be looking to have my hands in the pot all the way down to kindergarten and always reload instead of rebuild.”

Cox said he is aware of the potential his team has.

“I am very excited about this year and future years,” Cox said. “I’ve never been too big on pressing. I watched their speed and how quick and athletic they are and I’ve been rethinking my philosophy of not pressing. I might as well use the team’s speed and have more of a mentality to press.”

Cox said he felt the success of football can indeed translate to the hardwood.

“The biggest thing that I’ve noticed myself, as an athlete, is when I was in high school playing both football and basketball and there is a lot of defense that translates over to the hardwood,” Cox said. “I think you can probably use a corner back or a linebacker as someone that is going side to side in a lateral motion and easily translate that mentality from football over to basketball. Those individuals also playing defensive back positions are the ones that I am looking to lead the charge on our defense. That I am going to instill over here in basketball.”