Bluefield was on the cusp of winning its fifth basketball state championship in March but came up just short in a thrilling Class AA title game loss to Charleston Catholic.
Gone from that team are a pair of multi-year all-staters in R.J. Hairston and Kam’Ron Gore as well as several other key contributors such as Sencere Fields and Glen Keene. That core group played in nine state tournament games across four years, finishing as the state runners-up twice.
Gone is almost the entirety of that group as well as longtime head coach Buster Large who served as head coach during the 2013 and ’14 title-winning campaigns.
Replacing him is longtime assistant Tony Webster, the mastermind behind the Beaver defense during Large’s reign.
Despite the changes, one thing remains the same – the expectations for the Beavers.
“Our expectations never change,” Webster said. “Our expectation is to be in Charleston.That’s how I’m built and that’s how these kids are built in Bluefield and that’s not gonna change. I can say we know that we’re young. We know we’re green and I’m probably gonna start a lot of sophomores but I know we got some. We have probably only two seniors on the team, but that does not dictate how we’re gonna play and what our expectation is when March comes around. We wanna be in Charleston and that’s never gonna change in the Bluefield program.”
The Beavers do have some returners with experience.
Junior Jase Smith was a starter averaging nearly 17 points per game before tearing his ACL in January. Jeff King, who saw spot minutes late in the season has some experience as well.
“We had like six seniors that actually got to play last year,” Webster said. “We lost Jase in mid season and he was one of our starters. He was averaging 16 points a game. Jack Hurt, he’s back but he didn’t get a lot of experience but he did play a little bit in the sectional and then a regional. We’re gonna be really young. At first I thought we were only gonna have one senior on the team but I talked to a couple others that wanted to come out. They’re real green, but it does give us some numbers but we’re just a really, really young team that is really trying to find our way because we lost a ton. We had a ton of young good men that led us to the state championship game.”
It’s become common practice but a playoff run by the football team has also thrown a wrench in things. On top of being young, several players also played on the gridiron, making the process of fully acclimating a young team that much more challenging.
“It will take some time. It’s gonna take some time like I said we are real young and real green,” Webster said. “I got a new whole culture and staff which has a ton of experience. I coached football this year back at the high school and I will still be doing a little double duty but they were hanging out a lot cause we did have a couple of kids as well. We had we had a majority of kids and maybe three or four kids that actually are gonna make an impact on our varsity level and played football. We still have been practicing and getting some things done but you still got you good assistants helping do the right thing. I’ve got Jody Fuller back to help me again. It’s gonna take some time for us to really get our chemistry together as team. We will get there, but I don’t know when that will be.”
Despite the difference in personnel, Webster believes the strength and identity of the Beavers will remain the same.
“Defense and that’s always going to be around,” Webster said. “I’m a defense guy and I hang my hat on it. We’re gonna have to turn people over we’re gonna have to get out and just use our athletic ability which we’ve always done to try to do the things that we wanna do. Our offense is gonna be fine. We’ll take care of that with coach Fuller. This is more of a team that has to get defensive stops and stop people instead of rely on sets in my opinion. We had two scrimmages and I was real pleased with the scrimmages. We didn’t have everybody at the scrimmage just cause a football but I still think this team, about midseason I think that this team can be a pretty good team.”
