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Junior wing Will Yard (above) is one of several who will jump into big minutes for the Aces. (Photo: Josh Verlin\/CoBL)<\/p>\n
For Miller, who also runs track at Lower Merion and serves as sports editor for \u2018The Merionite,\u2019 this upcoming season marks not just a full season\u2019s chance to contribute to the Aces in a meaningful way as a leader on and off the court, but it\u2019s a dream come true.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honor, I\u2019ve been waiting my whole life to have a big role on this team, so I\u2019m just excited to be a part of it this year,\u201d Miller said. \u201cEvery year, LM loses a lot of seniors and I feel like every year, they say it\u2019s not gonna be out year, but everybody on this team\u2019s ready to step up, everybody\u2019s been putting in the work to be ready and it just motivates us. We\u2019re ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in the frontcourt, both the 6-3 Yard and 6-4 Dragut will lead the way, but it might be a long season underneath for the Aces. Both Yard and Dragut are still ailing from injuries, the latter, who doubles as a varsity baseball player, of whom is still recovering from surgery for a Jones fracture of his ankle.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Dragut\u2019s] a big part of our rebounding equation and he\u2019s been hurt, Will Yard has been hurt [and] we are worried about height,\u201d Downer said. \u201cThere might be times when we play four guards. It seems like every basketball coach is going to be a little bit paranoid about a lack of rebounding, but this particular group has us definitely worried in that department. And [it\u2019s going to be] rebounding by committee, our guards are going to have to rebound.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just rebounding that\u2019ll have to be done by committee, the scoring for the Aces looks like it\u2019ll be by committee as well with Parrish and Ingram leading the way as the team\u2019s most \u2018dynamic scorers\u2019 and Pulsifer, Miller and Dragut right behind them. Depth looks to be a strength this year, with Downer saying he might go as many as ten-deep on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
The road back to a Central League threepeat and the regular appearances in districts and states gets no easier this year. Lower Merion opens with a very challenging schedule at Coatesville on Dec. 5, home the next night against Downingtown West and then league play against Garnet Valley and Conestoga.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be hard, but I gotta keep my team under control most of the time, we\u2019re a small team so gotta play fast, we got to get strong enough [to match up] with teams,\u201d Parrish said. \u201cWhat I\u2019m going to try to do with my team is uplift them to the most they can be, to the best potential in all games and all practices so we can get off to the right start this season. […] So let\u2019s see what our team is made of.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, expectations come playoff time remain the same as always for the Aces, who have qualified for states 16 years in a row – a District 1 record.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always want to try to qualify for three tournaments, the league tournament, the district tournament and the state tournament,\u201d Downer said. \u201cThe Central League is, in my opinion, kind of top heavy this year with a tremendous Penncrest team, a tremendous defending District 1 champion in Conestoga and a dangerous [Garnet Valley] team. [And] again, we don\u2019t take any of this for granted, but the expectations never change. We want to qualify for these tournaments and [the] next thing that kind of comes onto the radar screen is can you scrape out a 20-win season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Junior wing Will Yard (above) is one of several who will jump into big minutes for the Aces.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[183,185,184,186],"class_list":["post-35712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}