Paris boys basketball didn’t have a good season last year but believes much better results are on the horizon.

Head coach Jeremy Skinner, who is in his second year coaching the team after 16 years previously coaching basketball at various levels in the school district, said the Coyotes were inexperienced a year ago and had issues scoring, averaging only 37.8 points per game in Paris’ 2-21 season a year ago.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to score the ball better this year,” Skinner said. “Our defense didn’t kill us (57.1 points allowed per game), but it didn’t help us much either. Hopefully, going man-to-man, it will help us out and get some easy fast break points as well.”

With an additional year of experience, Skinner brings back his top six players, including senior point guard Evan Smothers (8 points per game), senior post Colton Poddany (about 7.5 points) that go score from inside and outside, senior guard Mason Edwards (about 7.5 points), senior guard Ryan Breid, junior Walter Rucker, and junior Colton Kendrick, who Skinner hopes can return after Christmas after breaking his leg during football season.

Paris is happy to add two seniors to the program this season – 6-for-7 Alex Williams and Gunnar Fountain – which add much more size and hopefully rebounds to the Coyotes, Skinner said. Williams hasn’t played before but is “starting to figure it out” and 6-foot-1 Fountain is someone who can “bowl around in the post.” Junior Evan Riechmann is a returning played but an improved 6-foor-4 player.

“The tough part about last year is we were very inexperienced,” Skinner said. “We brought back a freshman starter from the year before. On the flipside, where we didn’t have any experience last year, we only graduated one senior, who was probably our seventh man. They’re starting to learn how I want them to play. With the experience coming back, I’m expecting to have a lot better season.”

Skinner thinks the team should shoot for double-digit wins this season, which Paris hasn’t achieved since its 17-10 record in 2020, but made it clear that the Coyotes shouldn’t just shoot to shoot. He has emphasized they should be patient on offense and should be more able to do so the more frequently they run the set plays.

“The goals and expectations are basically play hard and play smart and let the rest take care of itself,” Skinner said. “Obviously I want to get better at scoring and want to be disciplined with the ball. We’d just jack shots up instead of trust the next guy to do something. Hopefully, we’ll trust each other more this year and create for each other instead of looking to create for ourselves.”