Embarking on his second season as head coach of the ECC Men’s Basketball team, Kent Payne is optimistic.
Tomorrow, the team plays Milwaukee Area Technical College at 7 p.m. at home.
Their current record is 2-4.
Coach Payne hopes to “win our region and get a trophy.”
According to Forward Immanuel Brown, he said “Get better. Obviously, team goals, we want to win. We want to go down to the region championship. We try to create a legacy at ECC and have fun.”
He describes the team’s focus for the upcoming season. “We have an excellent group of basketball players and young men that are competitive of themselves and just keep getting better everyday at practice and getting better during the course of the season.”.
Also, he explained how to become a better player which is “My strategies is to stay in the gym, watch film, and get better mentally and physically. Getting shots up late at night or early in the morning and trying to become a better player.”
Brown mentions the teams that will be difficult to beat for the upcoming season. “It’s a lot of teams on our schedule that are difficult to beat. Triton is a really good juco team. Bryant and Stratton are good. We play in a good conference: McHenry, College of Lake County, Waubonsee.”
According to him, he mentions the players that will help him reach his goals. “We have a few leaders. Davee Flowers is very good. Xavior Gonzalez, Josiah Mills even though he’s hurt right now, Manny Brown. We like all of our guys, Derek Clark from South Elgin High School.” Also, Coach Payne mentions the players that were out last season due to injury which is “We have one. Josiah Mayes. He hurt his foot last week. Hopefully, he’ll be back soon.”
He mentions that no one is injured so far this season. According to him, he said “No. We’re all good for right now.” In order to build comradery amongst the players, both Coach Payne and the coaching staff decided to go to Feed My Starving Children in Schaumburg to volunteer during the fall. He mentions the schools that are the toughest to beat for the team. “In our conference, Waubonsee is very good. We played Triton again. We play South Suburban again, Milwaukee Tech.”
Coach Payne explained the toughest team that the team played last season.
“Last year, we played Triton College. They’re very good. They ended up getting second in the country at division 1 and junior college and then, we lost to South Suburban and they ended up getting second at division 2 in junior college. They’re both very good.”
Head Coach Kent Payne breaks down last season and what the team needs to do in order to do better for the upcoming season. Payne said “Difficult, challenging. We lost a number of players throughout the course of the season and it kinda limited our roster.”
“We’re a good group of guys,” Brown said. “We know that ECC has been struggling recently but we’re here to change that.”
