Coach Jeff Price knows he has a young team, but he can’t help but be excited.
“I’m excited about watching us grow,” Price said. “We will grow. Our job is to make these guys better.”
Price said he wants to watch the team develop but acknowledges growing pains will occur, because “they are a product of having a young team.”
“We’re going to hit rough patches,” Price said. “Sometimes people say you can’t see the forest because of the trees. Well, I’m looking at the forest.”
The challenge for the Tartan Pride will begin with their home opener, Nov. 6 vs. Clinton Junior College. Price said the challenge isn’t entirely a basketball one. The team will have 15 players making their regular season debut.
“I’m excited for the guys who are playing their first game,” Price said. “Fifteen guys get to experience something new.”
Despite the issues he knows the team will have, he said the Tartan Pride have talent.
“We have the physical talent to play with anyone in the nation,” Price said. “We have great guards, great slashers and some bigs that can rebound.”
The goal, he said, isn’t to win early or win often, but to get better, and he’s willing to sacrifice the present to preserve the future.
“We want to be a whole better in March than we are right now in October,” Price said.
The development of the program has allowed Price to recruit more easily. In the past, Price had to focus his efforts on players with some sort of scouting mark against them. Price gave the example of recruiting a kid who needed to gain weight or a player that played on a bad team and wasn’t recruited because of that.
“We’ll take kids that need a second chance, but that’s not our whole team,” Price said. “Five years ago we couldn’t recruit like this. It’s the program, we’re growing. We are recruiting on a higher tier now.”
Despite the pride Price feels in developing his program and sending kids onto a four-year university—which Price said is one the proudest moments he can have as a coach—he understands that other schools aren’t measured as heavily on those criteria.
At bigger schools, like the University of Dayton, the grading stick is different, Price said. If those teams don’t win, the graduation rates and other things are ignored.
“Sinclair isn’t like that,” Price said. “Other schools we play measure themselves off of winning titles. Our measuring stick isn’t by that one game. We are measured by where we send our kids.”
Price said he’s found that if he walks around Dayton with a Sinclair shirt on, people are beginning to recognize the name of the program. He said that makes him happy, because this is a crowded sports area.
“We’re in a position where our market is challenged,” Price said. “But some of the people are starting to get it.”
Price said before the team’s first scrimmage on Oct. 28, that he didn’t quite have a starting lineup or a rotation in place yet.
“If the guys don’t practice hard, they don’t start,” Price said. “You can play yourself in or out. The guys usually let me know who wants to play.”