With a young and inexperienced team, longtime coach Bobby Dobson was expecting his Washington-Liberty Generals to have a difficult start to the boys basketball season.
So the recent one-sided losses in the high-school team’s first games against perennially strong opponents, both on the road, were not a big surprise.
The Generals dropped their opening game to the Westfield Bulldogs, 65-78, then fell to the South County Stallions, 71-41.
Washington-Liberty had just one senior in its starting lineup against South County, a two-time state champion in recent seasons. Overall, W-L has only four seniors included on the roster.
Dobson likes his team’s talent and expects big improvement by season’s end, with further success in the pipeline for coming years from current underclassmen moving into leadership roles.
In the loss to South County, the outcome was decided early. Washington-Liberty turned the ball over multiple times, quickly falling behind 6-0, and trailed 25-8 at the end of the first quarter and 44-19 at halftime. The Generals played the Stallions closer in the second half.
Washington-Liberty’s leading scorer as a starter was junior guard Gabriel Smith, with seven points and three rebounds. Junior center Carmichael Williams scored six and had three boards, junior guard Mitchell Tuvshin scored five with four rebounds, and junior forward Sean Allen had a basket and blocked a shot.
Off the bench, freshman forward Luke Jones scored seven with a steal, junior forward Roy Smith scored four, sophomore Nikolai Wheeler and junior guard Santana Abdullah-Letherwood each made three-pointers, and seniors Jon Malatesta and Emmett Engelhardt each had a basket. Malatesta also had three rebounds and two assists.
NOTE: Malatesta and Engelhardt joined the team in recent days after finishing their fall seasons with different Washington-Liberty squads. Malatesta was a standout receiver for the football team and Engelhardt was the Liberty District championship runner for the boys cross country team.
