Centralia boys basketball has to find some new leaders this season but is confident they will be found.

The Panthers will still have seven seniors this year and a majority back who started last year, including senior Jack Romine, juniors Cullen Bennett and Boen Zimmerman.

Two starters and the top two leading scorers, Grant Erisman (15 points, 8 rebounds and 2 blocks per game) and Beau Gordon, graduated after their all-conference seasons that also saw the graduated Noah Brooks earn a Clarence Cannon Conference honorable mention.

Centralia begins the year with sophomore Logan Rosenfelder who was its third leading scorer from a season ago.

Head coach Scott Humphrey said he believes he has the players that can fill the void and even give Centralia a more balanced scoring team this season.

“I know Rosenfelder is going to be on everybody’s radar, but I think we’ll have more guys that can score this year than what we did last year,” Humphrey said. “Last year, we relied heavily early on two guys and then Logan, as he got more comfortable, gave us a third option.
“Cullen Bennett is going to have to carry a heavy load, especially early. Cullen’s got the ability to score a little bit outside, score a little bit inside and handle the ball. He’s athletic enough he can get to the rim and strong enough he can finish. Boen Zimmerman is going to have to find ways to score. Jack is kind of our energy guy, but he’s going to have to find more ways to put up some points and be offensive efficient.”

This is a “by committee” solution but a solution that is feasible for the year since Centralia has several younger players that could factor in, Humphrey said. Junior Noah Kropf had a good chance to be in the rotation last season but broke his leg, sophomore Travis Brooks figures to be fighting for varsity minutes and the other seniors will also be in the mix.

Humphrey would like to achieve a winning season like Centralia for the first time since 2020 with a 13-12 record. Last year, the Panthers finished 13-14 after losing four games by a margin of at-most 10 points and also dropping five games within tournaments – all against teams with 20-win records. He calls the games where either team could win “50-50 games” and thinks there are 12-15 of those on this year’s schedule, including School of the Osage, Marshall and Moberly.

Humphrey said Centralia finished last season strong in districts by beating Moberly and then losing to undefeated Mexico in the semifinals.

“We’d really like to get back to a winning season and build off that in the future,” Humphrey said. “Last year, I really thought probably more so out of my 12 years of coaching (7th at Centralia) at the time, we got the absolute most out of them at the end that we could’ve. The way we played in districts, knocking off Moberly and giving Mexico as good of a game we could’ve, I was very proud of. Hopefully, we can get back to that point where we squeeze every last drop of our potential out.”