ABOVE: Front row, from left: Landon Zimmer, Reagan Emmert, Eli Jensen, Brody Grathwohl, Tavin Janssen, Elliot Flohrs, Lane Kruse. Back Row, from left: Jackson Madsen, Blake Steuber, Braeden Shell, Carson Hastad, Griffin Studer, Bryce Borkenhagen, Elias Borkenhagen, Coach Brian Borkenhagen. Submitted photo.

GRANADA — The Granada-Huntley East Chain/Truman/Martin Luther Jaguars boys basketball team is focused on their game and removing distractions as they head into the season.

Featuring strong guard play, they are looking to improve on their 12-19 record and make a playoff push this year.

Twelfth-year Jaguars head coach Brian Borkenhagen is confident in both the speed and talent of his roster. With the return of starters Jackson Madsen, Bryce Borkenhagen and Carson Hastad, the coaching staff is pleased with what they’ve seen out of the starting three thus far.

“We have some really good guard play, especially we have young guard play,” said coach Borkenhagen. “I got my three guards at start, they’re two sophomores and a junior, we’ve got a group of sophomores and freshmen that are super talented or won a lot of games when they’re younger here, so we need to develop them and some of them are doing that on the B-squad, but we have two 10th-graders that are ready.”

Ball control and speed are the Jaguars’ strong suits this season, attacking the defense quickly and limiting turnovers have thus far led to the success the team has seen.

“We only had eight turnovers the other night over at Martin County West,” said coach Borkenhagen. “So we’re playing fast, but we’re still able to control the ball and we’ve got good senior leadership too, so that really helps in keeping everybody on the same page and our team’s really tight, so they all help with that too.”

Even though they are facing a tough schedule, coach Borkenhagen thinks his team is up to the challenge stating that many of his players have already improved over their last season and have stepped up to the challenge as the season goes on.

“The goal is … we have this conference championship game situation,” said coach Borkenhagen. “That’s kind of our first goal is to go win our side of the conference so we can go play in that conference [championship]. I think our possibilities are high here. We’ve just got to play good basketball, smart basketball, team basketball, but we’re as good as anybody, I think, around. We can play with anybody. So I’m really hoping that we get the most out of our guys and max out their potential and play some really big games in March.”

Now that the preseason dust has settled, the Jaguars are ready to lock in and get to work in their mission to find their way into the running for a banner.

“This year’s biggest challenges are kind of getting the non-basketball stuff out of the way,” said coach Borkenhagen. “Like your picture day and all your clothing orders and things like that and after we get the first game rolling like we had the other night, then it kind of just goes to like normal basketball stuff, but there’s a lot of other things that we have to deal with and take care of and that’s all part of it, but it’s nice when the basketball is just basketball every day.”

The Jaguars head to St. Clair for their next game at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.