A .500 start to the season is really a big deal at Larkin

Opening a season with a 3-3 record might not be considered a big deal to some boys basketball teams.

It is to Larkin.

Notching 3 wins by early December has breathed new life into a program that basically flatlined a year ago during a 1-25 season.

"To have already tripled our wins is great," senior guard Ryan Smith said. "It's just a relief to have a good season. The fans are more into it. It's just a totally different atmosphere with the team we have this year."

Larkin's solid start, highlighted by a 66-60 victory last Friday that snapped a 6-game losing streak against crosstown rival Elgin, has helped the Royals move past last season, when the program was caught in a perfect storm of yuck.

The timing was off from the start. New coach Larry Hight wasn't named to the position until after the Royals had finished summer-league play. Moreover, he had the misfortune of replacing successful coach Joe Kain, who led the Royals to a share of the 2004-05 Upstate Eight Conference title, Class AA regional titles in 2004, 2005 and 2006, a Sweet 16 appearance in 2005, and was extremely popular with the returning players used to his system.

Some of the seniors balked at being coached by Hight, who had taken a 10-year hiatus from the sport. The junior and senior classes never really jelled. Individual play superseded ball sharing on too many nights.

"It was there last season, but we had players who wanted to score, to take charge by themselves," senior Brandon Cooks said. "We would get torn apart, blown out and walk off the court with our heads down because we didn't play as a team."

For myriad reasons, the players never bought what their new coach was selling.

"I never lost them because I never had them, that's how I look at that group," Hight said. "You can't lose something you never had. This year I feel they're more comfortable with me."

Hight has been involved year-round in his second season. He attended most of the open gyms in the spring and coached the Royals throughout the summer, when they went 16-2 and built a winning attitude.

Also the school's softball coach, Hight admits he was a bit rusty last year after 10 years away from the hardwood. He tried to remedy the holes in his knowledge last summer by attending clinics and studying various offenses to find a scheme that best fit his returning personnel, players he knew infinitely better going into his second season compared to his first.

Not gifted with height - Larkin's tallest starter is 6-foot-3 senior forward Terell John - the Royals now run a perimeter-oriented offense that draws on senior guard Jeff Saurbaugh's ability to penetrate with the dribble and the outside shooting prowess of Smith, junior Drew Simonini and Cooks.

The Royals faced adversity before the season started when the team's leading returning scorer was expelled. But they forged ahead with a purpose in their attempt to develop a winning mindset from Game 1 forward.

Larkin was rewarded on opening night with a 54-39 win over Round Lake at the Hoops for Healing Tournament. Just like that the Royals had equaled last season's win total in a single game. A win over Woodstock improved their record to 2-1. The Elgin win - a game that restored the roar on the city's west side - elevated Larkin to 3-2.

"The biggest thing I wanted to do was win that first game," Hight said. "When you get that first win out of the way, you don't start thinking about last year. When you win the second one it alleviates it even more. When you win the third one, then people start seeing these guys can play. And they can play. They've got some strengths and some weaknesses, but we're tackling those (in practice)."

Larkin will still face it's share of tough nights between now and March. Lacking a dominant player in the post, the Royals will have to fight and claw for rebounding position against bigger teams, or they'll end up on the short side of the battle for the boards as they did Tuesday in a 53-48 loss to Downers Grove North. They were out-rebounded by 19 in that game and will be similarly out-sized tonight when they play at UEC rival South Elgin (6-0, 1-0), the team responsible for tagging Larkin with those 2 losses last summer.

But by putting their faith in their coach and working within his system to make themselves a better team, the Royals have already demonstrated an ability to win some close games, which they couldn't accomplish last year.

Whether they can ultimately finish with a winning record will depend on how hard the players continue to work in practice, injuries, and a hundred other factors. But it's clear the fight is back in Larkin basketball, which has put the fun back in the sport for a senior class that was hungry to return the program to respectability while having fun doing so.

"To be competing in every game and being right there is the most fun," Smith said. "You might not win every game, but you're excited to come out and play every night because you have something to play for. That's something we didn't really have last year."

And that's a big deal.

jfitzpatrick@dailyherald.com