After coming off a disappointing campaign last year, Niagara Falls is back in the gym and back to work. The team knows it can do better and it is putting in the work to get better.
The players are working hard individually and as a team and one of the first opportunities to show that off came at the Niagara Falls team camp Friday at Niagara Falls High School.
“We just want the kids to compete today,” Niagara Falls head coach Carlos Bradberry said. “We haven’t worked on much of anything offensively. We’re just trying to really work on getting our press down and just focusing on our kids playing hard. So that’s really the goal of today. Everybody just come out and compete and play hard.”
Last year, Niagara Falls went 8-12 overall and lost to Jamestown 61-54 in the Section VI Class AAA semifinals. The loss meant that for the first time since 2020, Niagara Falls failed to make it to the sectional title game. The team also became the first Wolverines squad to finish below .500 since the 2013-14 season.
Heading into next season, Bradberry does not feel pressure to turn it around. He is hoping his team finds success.
This year’s team will have to replace four players from last year’s team, including the team’s leading scorer, Tre Gayle, who averaged 11.9 points per game. In total, the team is losing 288 of the team’s 1,112 points.
One of the biggest differences between this year’s team and last year’s squad is the fact that this year’s team will have a lot of experience, with six seniors including Dequarius Seaberry.
One of the players who will be tasked with replacing that production is Seaberry, who averaged 6.6 points,2.5 assists, 2.2 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game.
“Probably my shooting skills and ball handling and being a leader, talking, being vocal,” Seaberry said about what he has been working on so far this summer.
The coaching staff of this year’s team will look different with the addition of Wayne Ollison. Through his role with 716 United, Ollison and the Wolverines players have already been working out together this summer, trying to improve.
During the team camp, the Falls hosted seven other teams in a bracket format with a winners bracket and a consolation bracket after the first round. In the Wolverines ‘ first-round game, they beat Williamsville South 70-17.
During much of the win over Williamsville South, Niagara Falls was putting on a full-court press, something that Bradberry knows will be a calling card for his team when the season officially kicks off in November.
In order to get in the kind of shape that will allow them to play the full-court defense for an entire game, the Wolverines need to get in better cardio shape.
During the first game of the camp, Seaberry learned that the team’s full-court press is the team’s recipe for victory.
“That’s what we’re working on,” Bradberry said. “We’re planning on hopefully getting in enough shape that we’ll be able to do that all season in every game. So that’s the goal: to get us in enough shape that that will be our sort of our new MO is guarding for 32 minutes, full court, pressing and trapping. We just got to get in a lot better shape to do it.”
The camp can allow Bradberry and his staff to experiment with different lineup combinations and strategies during games that do not count. They get to see who plays well together and who does not and what roles to put players in.
It also gives players who are on the line between playing on the junior varsity team or making it on the varsity team the opportunity to prove themselves.
“I’m looking at the kids that compete hard and taking a look at some of your younger kids who we may give a chance to be on varsity this year who are sort of on the fringe of being a JV or varsity guy,” Bradberry said. “So it gives those guys a chance to come out and compete against older guys and gives us a chance to evaluate them a little bit.”
While the Falls schedule for this upcoming season has not yet been released, the team will be starting practice during the first week of November.