Tigers to debut against Capital

The Mountain Home Tigers open their 2013-14 boys basketball season Saturday night at Capital against the 5A Eagles.

Brion Bethel begins his second season as head coach of the Tigers, who were winless in 20 games last season.

Coach Bethel indicated they had a great turnout for boys basketball this year at the high school level.

"We had about 40 kids turn out this year... enough to get about 12 kids or so on each team, so we're really, really impressed. We built a nice foundation last year, and this year the kids are working hard and really competing for spots."

Bethel really likes the talent this year's varsity squad has on it.

"Our varsity is looking good. We've got some talent," he said. "We've got about 15 kids right now on varsity, so we've got a few kids we got to see if they can swing down to JV, but they're competing so hard, it's hard to make a decision right now, and they've been in the weight room all year long, and they've been playing off-season basketball, so they're looking good."

Since it's the Thanksgiving season, Coach Bethel was thankful that the squad is blessed with lots of height this year.

"We've got some bigs. We've got Jerek Schetzle, he's 6 feet, 9 inches, and we've got two kids that are 6 feet, 5 inches and 6 feet, 6 inches, and then Tyler Parke's really going to help us out -- he's just a real athletic, all-around person. He can play the two-through-four position, maybe even five if we need him to, so we've got some talent. We've just got to put it all together and play consistent and make it work."

Bethel also is thankful for having players that can shoot the ball.

"We've got it all covered. Our ball handlers are a little young. We have a freshman or two that will probably have to play up and help us handle the ball, but Christian Riedel can shoot the ball, Jake Egusquiza can shoot the ball, Tyler Parke can shoot the ball -- I could just keep naming kids all day long -- so it's exciting to have this kind of talent."

Coach Bethel expects a tough conference race this season, probably led by Bishop Kelly.

"BK's going to be tough -- they've got a lot of their returning starters. Skyview's going to be tough. Middleton picked up a couple transfers that are supposed to be legit kids, so it's any man's race this year. It'll be exciting to see."

The Tigers open their season Saturday night at Capital in Boise against the Eagles. Coach Bethel expects them to be tough.

"They're supposed to be ranked one or two in the state in the 5A division. They've got some tough kids -- we played them during the summer -- very impressed with their speed and athletic ability and their experience and depth, so it will be good for us to go out and give everybody a chance to play and see how we're doing and almost like a weeding process before our (conference) season starts."

Bethel said they had a good summer season.

"Our kids played summer ball, plus we also played in tournaments in Bellevue, Wash., and Las Vegas Live in Las Vegas and California, so the kids got a lot of experiences and a lot of games in."

The Tigers play their first home game Tuesday versus Vallivue before they face Skyview on Dec. 5.