Randal Gast, third from left in the back, plans to bring change to this year’s varsity basketball team – including a few more victories. Photo Courtesy Martin Luther School
Randal Gast will look to right the ship for the Martin Luther School Cougars varsity basketball team, which has not won a championship since 2005 nor made the playoffs since 2009.
While the team’s new head has not coached a high school basketball game since 1989, Gast, who also serves as the school’s executive director, holds a breadth of experience. He coached for nine years in Baltimore in the 1980s and was the head coach of the Division II Concordia Clippers – the basketball team at Concordia College in Westchester – from 1990 to 1994.
While Gast has been on a coaching hiatus for the past 20 years, he doesn’t foresee today’s world of basketball to be terribly different from the one he left two decades ago. As he launches his game plan, Gast expects to run an up-tempo offense.
“I told the kids the other day games are 32 minutes long; I’d love to see us with 65 to 70 possessions,” he said. “Which means we would have ball in our hands three to four times a minute, which means we are not going to be eating time off the clock.”
In order for this to happen, the Cougars will have to not only play sound defense but they will need to force the other team to make mistakes and turn the ball over.
“We are looking to create a lot of our offense off of pressure defense,” Gast said. “We are going to be only as good as the defense we play and the turnovers we create allows us to be.”
In order to play at such a quick pace and press so much, the coach will have to rely heavily on his bench. He plans to have an eight or nine man rotation.
Gast is looking to rebuild a program that saw its varsity team go 2-18 last year, while its junior varsity game went 1-12. The main thing he looks to improve on this team is their confidence. If, the coach stressed, his players believe in themselves and the team, and they give it their all, the victories will come.
“I think the wins come if the desire is there, if the willingness to work together is there, and if the attitude is there,” he said.
Gast knows that coming into the season there are low expectations for himself and his squad. While he does not have a goal for the number of games he expects to win this season, he does foresee improvement.
“We are going to be competitive,” he said. “I think we are going to sneak up on teams and they will be surprised by where these kids are and where they can go.”
While the coach is not talking about playoffs, he is hopeful that his team could find their way in. In order to do this he will rely on a lot of underclassmen, as the team only has three returning varsity players. He can count on last year’s leading scorer, sophomore, Devin Berrios. Berrios will start at the two guard spot, but will play some point guard as well. Perhaps the player he will rely on the most is the team’s starting point guard, Cameron Thompson, who is only in eighth grade.
“The kid can play; he has a chance to special,” he said. “Physical maturity is the only thing that can hold him back.”
Gast will have the benefit of having Ken Johnson, the last coach to win a championship for the Cougars, as his assistant coach.
Gast is hoping to not only teach the kids the game of basketball, but to teach them to be good students, leaders, and, most of all, good people.
By Michael Florio
