DMPS Basketball on the Rise for 2016-17 Season
The high school basketball season promises to be an exciting one at DMPS.
Last summer the stage was prematurely set when PrepHoops.com published its “Way Too Early” rankings of the cream of the boys’ basketball crop in the state for a 2016-17 season that felt far off.
Well, don’t look now but two CIML Metro Conference powerhouses are getting ready to face off this Friday night: North’s up-tempo, highlight reel style against Hoover’s trademark stingy defense that’s taken them to the state tournament three times in the last four years.
Hoover was ranked #2 and North was pegged at #10 by PrepHoops. Both schools have lots of scoring punch returning from last season and are led by former winners of Iowa Coach of the Year honors, Courtney Henderson for the Huskies and Chad Ryan for the Polar Bears. Given their respective mascots, is it any wonder the Hoover and North gyms warm up when it gets cold outside?
When the Des Moines Register released its Iowa Eight preseason list of the state’s most promising players it included North senior Jal Bijiek, a shot-swatting defender and dunkster extraordinaire, thanks to the able assistance of young but seasoned point guard Tyreke Locure, who just missed inclusion in the Register’s select octet after an outstanding varsity debut last year as a 9th grader when he led Class 4A in assists, just as Jal did in blocked shots.
Jal uses his seven-foot wingspan to high-flying advantage defensively as a basket protector and those long arms flush lots of alley-oop feeds from Tyreke on the offensive end of the floor. Which is more fun, the dunks, which he’s been perfecting since his first one in 8th grade, or the blocks? Jal smiles widely and answers this way: “Defense wins championships,” he said, sounding like he was quoting someone he didn’t name.
Both teams opened with tough road tests last week. Hoover got past Ankeny and North dropped a hard-fought overtime contest at Waukee (ranked third, by the way, in that summer pecking order) that only served to solidify the Polar Bears’ stature as one of the state’s most dangerous squads. Hoover then defeated defending state champion Valley convincingly back at home over the weekend (before losing north of the state border in a quick turnaround game the next night against a Minnesota power, Minneapolis DeLaSalle, in the Twin Cities Breakdown Tip Off Classic) while North looked to rebound from the Waukee loss in its home opener against Ankeny Centennial.
It looked briefly like the Bears might run the Jaguars out of the gym. They netted 10 points in the game’s first two minutes. Tyreke was stealin’ and dealin’. Jal registered a quick block and a breakaway slam. At the break the lead was ten. But Jal sustained a rib injury and had to come out. The visitors chipped away and ultimately pulled the upset in a game that went down to the final minute and underscored Jal’s centrality to the team’s prospects.
Hoover is looking for a third consecutive trip to the state tournament at Wells Fargo Arena next March. North is looking to build on the foundation of 63 wins in its last 82 games, “the first time ever that North has had four straight winning seasons,” according to Ryan who, incidentally, attended North until his family moved during high school and he eventually graduated from Hoover, Class of 1990.
“We have great respect for Hoover and Coach Henderson,” Ryan said before practice last Thursday. “They have built something special and now we are too at North. Really, it’s a great time for basketball right now all across the district.”
Jal’s brother Gatdoar (“We call him G-Baby,” said Coach Ryan) also logs significant playing time in the North backcourt and the brothers Bijiek go back a long way for such young men, about 7,000 miles. Their parents fled war-torn South Sudan in 1994 before the boys were born and that storyline recalls another pair of basketballing brothers, Dau and Peter Jok, who came to America as young boys after their father was killed in the strife that still plagues their homeland. Both starred at Roosevelt before going on to play in college, Dau at Penn in the Ivy League and Peter at Iowa where he is currently the Hawkeyes’ leading scorer in his senior year. The Sudanese pipeline has also delivered some notable players all the way to the NBA, including Manute Bol and Luol Deng.
“Our team reflects the diversity of the student body at North,” said Ryan. “I have the opportunity here to coach and learn from kids who represent a wide range of backgrounds and experience and I’ve never had a harder worker than Jal (rhymes with y’all). He sets the example for everybody else.”
Ryan sets some solid examples himself. Yes, the jolliness of Jal and “G-Baby” seems infectious. They both grin a lot until it’s time to slap on the game faces and the Polar Bears all seem to genuinely enjoy practicing and playing together. But there’s more to it than that. For instance, four members of the team shared Thanksgiving dinner at Coach Ryan’s house. The group has a family vibe to it that’s real.
“Coach Ryan is like a second dad to me,” said Locure. “He helps me in so many ways to be my best.”
And sometimes that includes a good hollering.
Thursday at practice during a half-court scrimmage drill Ryan would blow his whistle like a director yelling “Cut!” and demonstrate what he was looking for in terms of fighting through screens and helping one another out on defense. “We will score points,” he assured his team, “but we MUST improve on this end. We have to get better on defense. And to do that we have to communicate!”
In that phase of the game the Huskies are a good model to follow. And the Polar Bears will get a good look at them on Friday night. It promises to be a real dog (and bear) fight.
To view the schedule for basketball and all winter sports, visit the DMPS Athletics page.
