Around The Portage Trail Conference - County Division

The Record-Courier Newspaper ran a preview of basketball teams in that area in their Tuesday November 24th publication. Six teams in the PTC County Division are located in the geographical region the paper covers. Besides giving a basic overview of each of these 6 teams, The Record-Courier asked each team's head coach to predict how they thought the league would shake out. The following are excerpts from the predictions that were made.


Waterloo Head Coach John Herchek
“On paper, you've got to look at East Canton. They are probably the number 1 favorite because they return everybody, and they came on strong at the end of last year and had a nice tournament run. Mogadore and Rootstown are going to be much improved because they played a lot of young kids last season and they got better as the year went on.... I really think that the league is going to be more balanced than it has been over the last 3 or 4 years. Anybody can beat anybody, especially early in the year.”

Streetsboro Head Coach Todd Muckleroy
“East Canton has everyone returning from last year and they're a pretty feisty team. Waterloo has a pretty good team, you can't count out Windham, and I think Mogadore has some good athletes and some competitive kids.”

Garfield Head Coach Mark Rado
“East Canton returns everybody and they should be pretty good, Streetsboro is always athletic while Windham always brings a good team. Mogadore and Rootstown will also be better with a lot of talent returning.”

Mogadore Head Coach Russ Swarts
“East Canton and Streetsboro are going to be very solid, and Waterloo and Windham, with their tradition and the fact that both of them are always very well-coached teams, you can never count them out.”

Rootstown Head Coach Andrew Vlajkovich
“The league is wide open, but Streetsboro and East Canton are the front runners.”

Windham Head Coach Marty Hill
“Even though they lost a lot of people, I think Waterloo will be a lot tougher than people think. East Canton returns just about their entire team so they'll be tough, and Streetsboro will be good, especially if (Jay) Lugo ends up playing for them. That would add another dimension to their team.”


Things I Think I Think
I think the league has more parity than usual. The teams typically at the top are in a transition year, while some of teams not accustomed to being at the top of the league have the experience from playing more underclassmen the last few years. Could a few unexpected upsets be brewing?

I think East Canton received a lot of respect from the other coaches in the league. The core returners have earned that respect. Almost all coaches mentioned East Canton as the first or second team to beat in the conference.

I think no one is betting on Streetsboro or Waterloo to have a "down" year. Yeah, they lost a lot of good players off of teams that had huge records, but the majority opinion is that the systems and coaching philosophy will prevail.