MORGANTOWN — Mid-summer hoops were played on Saturday as the annual Morgantown Shootout presented by Pac-5 Furniture took place at Mylan Park with twelve total teams competing, including local high schools Morgantown and University.
Notably, multiple state tournament teams and two state championship winners were in the building on Saturday. The defending state champions in Class AAAA and AAA, Morgantown and Fairmont Senior, faced off in the best game of the day. The contest came down to the wire and saw MHS claim a 53-48 win over the Polar Bears.
As the June three-week period winds down for some teams, Saturday’s shootout is a perfect way for coaches and players to build some chemistry and assess a few things going into the rest of summer and the school year in the fall.
“Really thank everyone for making the trip to Morgantown for this great event,” MHS head coach Dave Tallman said. “This is an opportunity to come and improve and I think it was a great day overall.”
MHS had three teams playing with a varsity, junior varsity, and freshmen team all getting games in. The varsity squad for MHS played games against Musselman, Fairmont Senior, and Beckley.
With the season still four to five months away, Tallman says the summer is about developing and building the foundations.
“We want to play hard and work on our basics,” he said. “The biggest thing is to get them out and competing against some quality competition.”
University head coach Joe Schmidle echoed his crosstown counterpart, saying the summer months are a valuable time for all teams and that while they won’t remember everything they learned, they won’t forget the chemistry that is built.
“If they don’t love each other, nothing else matters,” Schmidle said. “This is good to help them bond and grow closer. We have a large mix of upperclassmen and younger players and will need to get stronger and trust our teammates more, but the improvements we’ve seen in the last week with both groups have been good.”
For the remainder of the summer, some players will move on to prepare for fall sports, while others will join their respective AAU teams.
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