Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The Oak Harbor boys basketball team looks to respond from a tough season last year.
“We had a lot of adversity last year at the varsity level,” Oak Harbor’s 15th-year head coach Eric Sweet said. “We learned and grew from it and this year we're trying to push ourselves back up to where we were in previous years and above the .500 record and stuff like that.”
The Rockets were without Ethan Stokes last year, who transferred to a prep school in Arizona after earning First Team All-NBC recognition while averaging 19.7 points per game in 2023-24.
On top of that, three-year letterwinner Jaxson Overmyer injured his ACL during football season.
“Every year you want to compete at the top of the league,” Sweet said. “Selfishly, as a head coach, I want to come in and say, 'Okay, guys, let's compete for the top two or three spots in the NBC.' But being realistic, coming off of a 4-17 loss last year, we're looking to improve. We're looking to get back into the .500 range and push back up into maybe not the top one or two of the NBC, but the next tier of the NBC.
“It's not that I want to say we can't compete for a league title. I'm trying to be realistic with what we're trying to push to and where we want to go. I think this year is about getting back to what we were doing prior to last year. I thought we had a good group of kids last year. We just weren't rewarded with the wins. This year we want to try to reward ourselves with getting back to that .500 or above record that we've had in the past.”
Oak Harbor returns a pair of starters this year in 6-1 junior guard Zach Hallett and 6-1 senior wing Carson Steinbrick. Hallett, a two-year letterwinner, averaged 12.5 points last year, while Steinbrick tallied 10 points per contest and is a three-year letterwinner.
“I expect a lot of leadership from both of them,” Sweet said. “They’ve both played since their freshman year. They're now juniors and seniors. It's now time for them to be the head of this program and take their turn in the leadership role. They both have different skill sets that complement each other, so between the two of them, I definitely expect them to step up and be both leaders on the court as far as playing hard and doing things the right way, and then also off the court by being vocal and leading us the right way as a program and doing the right things in the classroom and stuff.”
In addition to them, the Rockets return several others in 6-5 junior forward Brayden Ayres, 6-4 senior center Alex Rife, and 5-11 junior guard Braxtin Witt.
“Zach and Carson are the two big names coming back from last year's team,” Sweet said. “Stat-wise, they're the two that had the most points for us. And then the other three got some minutes last year, played some good quality time. We're hoping that this year, as juniors and seniors, they grow and mature. We also have a couple other juniors coming into the mix that will get some playing time here and there.”
Overall, Oak Harbor will feature five seniors, eight juniors, and one sophomore. The other seniors, aside from Steinbrick and Rife, are 6-2 forward Fulton Krupp, 5-8 wing Brayden Binns, and 6-1 forward Garret Perkins.
“I kind of have this next group who are juniors that don’t have varsity experience, but they have experience playing a lot of minutes,” Sweet said. “I wouldn't deem us over the top experienced, but at the same time I don't deem us super young. It's like this weird, nice combination of some very quality minutes from kids that have been playing with some other juniors and seniors who are going to step into a role that they should be comfortable with doing because they've had good quality JV minutes in the past.”
Ayres and Rife should provide some good size for the Rockets.
“We’re really trying to be a balanced scoring team, both inside and outside,” Sweet said. “The last couple of years, we have probably shot a lot more threes than maybe needed. This year we have some nice size and nice length. Brayden is 6-5 and Alex is 6-4 and 310. The kid's a great lineman. We're trying to get the ball inside a little bit more and have this nice balance of an inside-outside attack as far as offense goes.
“As far as defense goes we're working on having some really good ball pressure because we got some good length to us this year. We've been kind of small in the past. This year, I feel like we have more kids over six-foot who have some good length to them that we can use to our advantage. We're trying to use that length on the defensive end to benefit us.”
With the tough breaks of last season, Oak Harbor this year will also have to overcome the graduation of Michael Lalonde and Gavin Witt.
But Sweet loves the opportunity.
“I love basketball, man. I'm a basketball junkie,” he said. “I was raised by a head coach. I have done nothing but basketball in the wintertime since I was born. People talk about skiing or sledding, all this stuff. I hear snow, I think of a round, orange basketball. I'm always excited for the season. Practices have been really high energy, really focused. These kids are listening and working really, really hard for me.
“I'm excited for this group to go out there and compete, but I've also always enjoyed what I do and I enjoy being in Oak Harbor, and I love it here. My excitement level is always high for every year for each group because they're just different. And it's their turn. I always love it when it's the next person's turn to take the reins and move the program in the right direction. I'm excited for the year and what my kids have been giving me so far and what they'll continue.”
