As if losing senior starters/contributors Shawn Shaffer, Sam Archer and Justin Beaudin wasn't hard enough to deal with, the Green Hope men's basketball team will also lose two underclassmen returning starters for next year.
Rising junior point guard Kameron Bryant has moved into Panther Creek's area, and will start for the Catamounts next year (we'll have a story on that in the near future).
Players have also told me that returning senior starter small forward Mo Somadjabi will be transferring to South Wake Academy next year.
The losses add up to 81 percent of the Falcons' scoring from last year.
The good news is just as someone exits the door, another one comes in. Green Hope will add transfer forward Tariq Forte next year.
Forte comes from Long Island, N.Y., where his Roslyn High team finished runner-up in the Long Island title. Forte scored a season-high 12 points in the final game, and had a season-high 11 rebounds in a game in February.
He rarely scored in double-digits, but considering he was only a sophomore and teammate George Beamon (now a freshman at Manhattan) averaged a whopping 34 points per game, that's not saying he won't be a big-time contributor on a depleted Green Hope team.
One big reason why not to count out Green Hope is that they will return the league's dominant junior varsity squad, spearheaded by 6-7 Max Povse.
Povse, who said he was planning on playing both basketball and baseball next year (despite rumors that he's going to focus on baseball where he throws 87 mph), is a rising junior who scored 17 points in his only varsity game last year (in the first round of the playoffs as a starter), should give the Falcons a go-to guy in the post.
Povse could be a big reason why Green Hope, which finished 9-17 last year, will have a better record this year despite losing an entire starting lineup which only included three seniors. That, and Athens Drive, Panther Creek and Middle Creek all lost Division I players (PC lost 3, MC lost 2).
One opposing coach told me last year Povse might've been the best player at the school, so I have no idea why it took him all year to beon the varsity. But I do have an idea how Green Hope will do next year, and it'll be pretty good (but behind Apex and Lee County).
