The Ballenas Whalers senior boys basketball team seems like a MASH unit these days, having a hard time staying healthy but still managing to win games.
Taking on the Barsby Bulldogs (Nanaimo) on Tuesday evening, the Whalers were looking to rest some of their players and try to pick up another league win in the process, which they did 76-56, bringing their league record to 3-2.
“We can’t handle anymore injuries as a team,” head coach Kevin McMillen said. “As it stands right now, we’re hurting for guys and we don’t have a large roster to begin with, so it makes it equally as tough.”
“I’d just like to see these kids get healthy, that’s more important to me than picking up another win. But we were able to pull it off, which is the best of both situations. We were able to try some different things on defense in the game against Barsby, so it was nice to see the way things turned out and we escaped without any injuries.”
At the G.P Vanier tournament last weekend, the Whalers finished with two wins and two losses, beating the likes of the Mt. Doug Rams out of Victoria, who are one of the top ranked teams on the south Island.
The Whalers came into that tournament with a healthy group of players but had more than their fair share of injuries before the tournament was finished.
“We’re depleted right now,” McMillen said. “We haven’t seen a team be hit this hard with injuries in all our combined seasons of coaching and playing basketball. Luckily, we’ve got a break coming up with exams so we’re hoping to have a few more healthy bodies back in the lineup when we start up again on the 29th.”
With no games on the horizon until then, the Whalers will take the time to heal and work on their team game, fine-tuning things in practice.
The practice aspect of things has almost been a foreign concept to the Whalers, who’ve lost their practice time to both junior basketball games and tournaments so far this season, having only practised two times in the last few months.
“It’s crazy,” McMillen said. “I haven’t seen a team have such little practice in all my years of being involved with basketball.”
“We haven’t been able to get in the gym when we’ve got it booked, either because of our juniors having games and we’re away at tournaments on Thursdays when we’re supposed to practice. It’s kind of funny, because I look at it and think of how much better this team could be if we had those two practices a week like we’re supposed to. It’s amazing to think about it like that, we’ve been close in a lot of games against some tough teams and I think that with that regular practice schedule, we could definitely be right there with some of the top teams at the Triple-A level.”
