Cardinal Hoopsters Take On Giants

FARMINGTON -- Farmington boys basketball begins the season Friday against Providence Academy at home in Cardinal Arena followed by a string of strong nonconference opponents including Van Buren, Bentonville and Alma.

Coach Beau Thompson acknowledges this year's team won't have a 20-points-per-game scorer such as Will Pridmore, who represented the school at the All-Star game last summer, and will have to compete a little differently without having a big-time scorer.

Thompson feels the squad has a good mix of young and experienced players although he admits only two varsity players return from last season's team that won a conference championship.

Senior Austin Shelley, 6-7 post, started every game last season, and Marqwaveon Watson, who just came off the football field as starting quarterback will have the ball in his hands a lot playing point-guard.

"We think he's an elite athlete and gives us something a lot of other teams don't have which is speed up-front," Thompson said. "He can dominate both ends of the floor like Danny Valenzuela did last year and to go along with it he does a great job of handling the ball."

The experience level drops off after that.

"Besides that we're kind of infusing a few kids that played JV for us last year," Thompson said.

Senior Logan Landwehr (6-2) drew praise for having a great JV season last year and will play at the three spot.

"He's had a good spring, a good fall. He's a really good athlete," Thompson said. "We think he can help with the scoring load this year."

Sophomores coming off a junior high team that went 26-2 last season will round out the varsity roster.

"They are ultra-skilled sophomores, but they are sophomores," Thompson said. "Especially with our schedule early, I can see us taking some lumps. We play Providence early, but then we pretty well play the 5A, 6A gauntlet. We play Bentonville West, Van Buren, Bentonville, Alma, Siloam Springs. That will be our next five games after that. Those 6A schools, they will be bigger, faster and stronger than us I'm sure because of the quality of kids they got playing."

Alma and Siloam Springs were young teams last season when Farmington defeated them, a feat which won't be as easy to accomplish this year.

"The Bentonville schools we didn't play (last season). They've all got everybody back and we're just going to try and keep our head afloat and get better every game until conference gets here," Thompson said. "We've got a tough stretch to start off."

Looking ahead at the 4A-1 schedule, Thompson said Harrison is always going to be contender. The Goblins have two really good guards. Huntsville has a great basketball tradition and annually challenges opponents. Thompson said Gravette probably returns more players from last season than any other team in the league.

"Really the league had a lot of turnover this last year," Thompson said. "The league was really senior-laden. All the All-State kids were seniors so I think it's wide-open. That's why we play the nonconference schedule we play. Come the first league game against Prairie Grove, which is late in December, we want to be battle-tested and play in some environments that are like that we're going to play in that night at Prairie Grove. So, it all leads up to that for us."

Sports on 11/13/2019