By ROY HESS and STEFAN MODRICH | Staff Writers
Who better to rely on for accurate hoops preseason predictions than basketball coaches?
Perhaps not sports writers.
Anyway, the Rio Grande Valley Basketball Coaches Association recently announced boys and girls rankings for each Valley district along with preseason Valley top 10s for each gender.
Girls basketball started last week, and the boys began Friday.
The Los Fresnos Falcons again enter the new season with some high expectations as the RGVBCA’s No. 1 boys team.
The Falcons have either won or shared five straight District 32-6A championships.
They’re feeling confident about their chances for district title No. 6 with three starters back in Elian Gonzalez, Ricky Altamirano and Tony Aldrighetti, all seniors.
“While the three returning starters were huge contributors last year, other players I expect big things from are freshman shooting guard Gerry Martinez and senior wing player Luis Gonzalez,” Los Fresnos coach Marco Hinojosa said. “We’re going for title No. 6.”
District 32-6A will be a focus of attention again, with strong teams such as Harlingen South, Harlingen High and Brownsville Hanna challenging the Falcons for top supremacy. San Benito and Brownsville Rivera can’t be discounted, either.
Rivera’s new coach is Jesus Alvarez. He replaces retired veteran coach Saul Villarreal.
South is ranked No. 9 in the RGVBCA poll.
“I have two starters back in Alex Rodriguez, a junior, and Brady Bennett, a senior,” Hawks coach Brian Molina said. “Brady is a four-year letterman and three-year starter. Alex is a three-year letterman and a two-year starter.
“This season, our strength will be our depth and athleticism,” Molina added.
Another team to watch is Harlingen High with Clayton Cretors as coach along with junior Michael Castillo and senior Jordan Crenshaw as returning starters.
“We look to be a team that gets up and down the court and plays in transition,” Cretors said. “Although we only have two returners, we have players with varsity experience and we expect to lean on those guys quite a bit.
“We have high expectations and look to compete for a district title,” Cretors added. “Our non-district schedule has some high quality teams that will prepare us for our very competitive district.”
Hanna returns one of 32-6A’s top players in Victor Campos, who quarterbacked the football team. Campos and fellow senior Cristian Torres return as starters for the Golden Eagles.
“We have a good combination of senior leaders and young players who will play big roles,” Hanna coach Fermin Lucio said. “It’s always going to be a challenge in tough, talented District 32-6A, where every game is so important.”
Sam Lucio, Fermin’s brother, returns as coach at Brownsville St. Joseph, where the Bloodhounds play in TAPPS. SJA has two returning starters as well in point guard Victor Salinas and post Luigi Cristiano.
“This season, we are looking to bounce back after a tough season last year,” Sam Lucio said. “We bring back a lot of talent from last season’s team. We were very young one year ago.
“Those young players learned a lot last season,” the SJA coach added. “With that experience, we are looking to compete for a TAPPS district championship.”
Also a team to watch is Brownsville Jubilee, which is playing in District 32-3A for the first time after previously competing in a charter school league.
Two of the proven smaller schools to watch in the area are Santa Rosa, which seems to make a deep playoff run every season, many times to state, and San Perlita, which advanced to the Region IV-2A Tournament last year and starts the new season at No. 10 in the RGVBCA rankings.
Santa Rosa coach Johnny Cipriano will have 11 of 12 players returning from last year’s team that made a deep run to the regional semifinal before bowing out to San Antonio Cole.
Sophomore C.J. Olivarez will run the point for the Warriors as one of the key pieces of a young core that includes Chris Vela, Mike Bermea and Adam Cavazos.
“Last year, we had a very young group,” Cipriano said. “Having such a young team and making the Sweet 16, that just heightened the expectations for this year. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that we can reach that expectation.”
The Trojans will have a sophomore-laden squad this season, centered by 6-foot-6 Tige Johnson, the reigning All-Valley Sports Awards Boys Basketball Player of the Year.
“We’re just extremely young right now,” San Perlita coach Nathaniel Garza said. “We do return (five) players. … I guess the question marks around them is our young players and how our youth is going to develop.”
Other players to watch from San Perlita are senior Gabriel Lopez, junior James Herrera and senior point guard EJ Nieto.
Then there’s District 32-5A, which figures to be every bit as competitive as 32-6A this season.
Ranked in the RGVBCA top 10 from 32-5A are Brownsville Veterans Memorial at No. 7 and Mercedes at No. 8.
The Chargers opened their season Saturday with a home game against Corpus Christi Miller, the team that knocked out Brownsville Veterans in last year’s area round.
Brownsville Veterans coach Larry Gibson thinks the Chargers will be approaching this season with a chip on their shoulders and a clear goal: to reach the Class 5A Region IV championship after falling short in last year’s regional quarterfinal.
“We feel like we should have made it to the regional tournament last year,” Gibson said. “Right after they beat us, I called their coach and asked them if they wanted to play us next year, and he said yes.”
Gibson’s expectations remain high for a group that graduated five players last year but retains four of its starters, including guard/forward Damian Maldonado.
“I think Damian’s the best player in the Valley,” Gibson said. “Damian’s an all-around player, he’s going to play some point guard for us this year.”
New to the starting lineup this season will be sophomore Jerry Casteneda.
Gibson added that bench depth was a strength of last year’s squad and is still a question mark for this season, but he expects Josh Silva to be play a significant role on the second unit.
The Chargers are coming off of a 32-7 regular season in 2018-19. They finished 13-1 in District 32-5A en route to a district title.
The path to repeating will be an arduous one, however.
“I think it’s going to be a dogfight,” Gibson said. “Everybody’s got to come to play every night. There’s no off nights. … I’m really looking forward to it. It’s one of the things that keeps me going, the competition and camaraderie that I have with everybody.”
Beyond Brownsville Veterans and Mercedes, another team looking for a return to the playoffs is Brownsville Pace.
“I have one starter back, sophomore point guard Cristian Guajardo, who was the All-Metro newcomer of the year last season and the Class 5A All-Valley newcomer of the year,” Pace coach Jose Luis Ramirez said. “I also have two other players who started a few games last season. They are sophomores Elias Fortaneli and Alexander Agado.
“Those three sophomores will be on our starting lineup with junior guard Abraham Rincon and senior forward Esequiel Hernandez,” Ramirez added. “We’re in a really tough district, and any team is capable of achieving what we aim to do. We’ll just take one game at a time and work to improve as the season progresses.”
The Brownsville Porter Cowboys hope to gain experience as the season progresses as well.
“We are returning three starters in Kevin Garcia, Daniel Morales and Rocco Almazan, and after that, the entire team is made up of new arrivals,” Cowboys coach Luis Garza said. “We’re optimistic we can turn the corner come district time. But we’re still treading cautiously. Right now, our team is extremely young, lacks (varsity) experience and depth.”
Other teams in the RGVBCA boys rankings that weren’t mentioned previously in this story are No. 2 McAllen Rowe, No. 3 Sharyland Pioneer, No. 4 Edinburg Vela, No. 5 PSJA North and No. 6 Weslaco High.