Seniors add stability, now Wooster basketball wants wins
Senior guard Brady Bowen (23) is one of the key contributors in Wooster High boys basketball team’s goal of improving on last year’s seven-win campaign.
It can be hard to find stability in high school sports. New casts of athletes cycle in every year. Coaching staffs sometimes have just as much turnover. And the landscape of prep sports is ever-shifting.
A season ago Wooster boys basketball found itself in its most extreme year of transition in some time — a new head coach and a mostly inexperienced varsity roster — while still firmly entrenched in a Division I Northeast District that made playoff aspirations more hopeful than ambitious.
There’s still much to figure out, but led by second-year head coach Che Richardson and senior guards Brady Bowen and Anthony Carmean, the 2024-25 Generals have the tools to improve on a seven-win campaign from a year ago and set themselves up for that coveted stability the program enjoyed in the recent past when they were a fixture at the top of the Ohio Cardinal Conference.
The Generals took a big step on Dec. 17, knocking off Lexington 75-68. A year ago, Lex ran through the OCC without a loss, and was unbeaten coming into the game at Wooster.
Wooster is still moving its pieces around its senior leaders, but Bowen and Carmean are the type of players to lead a winner.
“They’ve been huge for us this year as far as leadership,” Richardson said. “They’ve taken on a huge role for us in terms of scoring and other aspects of the game.”
Bowen’s well-rounded game and competitiveness make him someone Richardson and his staff can rely on. A multi-sport star headed to the University of Akron for baseball, Bowen does a little bit of everything for the Generals. His activity on both ends of the floor is crucial to Wooster’s offensive and defensive game plans.
A dedication to get stronger has paid dividends for Bowen in all areas of his game.
“I felt like last year I wasn’t very strong on the court,” Bowen said. “That comes from (training for) baseball a lot too. I’ve been in the weight room trying to get bigger so on the court I’m not getting roughed around. I can compete with the big guys — be inside, get offensive rebounds and do all the effort stuff.”
Meanwhile, Carmean’s natural scoring ability gives Wooster a player who can create offense out of thin air. When everything else breaks down and Wooster needs a bucket, Carmean can find ways to get his shot off no matter what, especially with an emphasis on improving his driving and finishing at the rim this offseason.
“Last year I’d go into games thinking I needed to chuck up a bunch of 3s, which isn’t always the answer,” Carmean said. “Sometimes you’re hot, and sometimes you’re in a stretch when you’re not making as many. That’s been my big step into becoming who I am now.”
Wooster is counting on fellow starters Tre Edwards, Brady Mingay and Tommy Wilds to bolster the roster and make it a nightly threat in the OCC, which features loaded Lexington and Mansfield Senior squads as the teams to beat. The 2-0 start to the conference slate is a good one, but with Senior and Ashland to play by Jan. 3, Wooster knows it’ll need to bring it in order to stay in the top half of the league early.
With nobody on the roster above 6-foot-4, Wooster must rely on its quickness and physicality to compete with bigger teams on its schedule. Early on, the Generals have used an extended rotation of 11 players — Seth Berry, Jack Dossi, Darrius Howard, Javon Mosley, Drew Thomas and Michael Wright come off the bench — trying to find the right lineups. As the season progresses, that number may dwindle, but Wooster‘s depth and togetherness is representative of what they want to be about this season — brotherhood.
“It’s creating a culture,” Bowen said. “It’s in everybody’s mind. It’s not a me program. It’s all about the team. It’s helped us on the court because we play together now. It’s not all about me; it’s about playing together, and it’s really helping us at the beginning of the season so far.”
A major focus for the Generals’ quest for a winning season is finishing out games. Last season Wooster lost four games by five points or fewer and saw a few other close games get away from them down the stretch.
“Our last game of the season last year, the playoff game against Avon, we were right in that game,” Bowen said. “We should have been in it at the end of the fourth quarter. But we let the game get to us. We started getting in our heads. We got a couple technicals, and it just fell apart. Those are the moments we have to stop and figure out.”
With a long season ahead, the Generals will have plenty of ups and downs, but armed with better chemistry and more experience, stability is right around the corner.