Patriots visit bowl November 23rd (November 11, 2005)

Hoosier Hysteria comes alive Wednesday, Nov. 23, as the boys basketball team opens another season with hopes of regaining the magic of the past.
The traditional Thanksgiving-eve season opener against the Union County Patriots will tip off at 6:30 (JV) at the Spartan Bowl. The Spartans hold a 26-year and 35 game-winning streak against the Patriots heading into this season. The last time the Spartans were defeated by Union County was in the 1979-80 season, when the Patriots posted a 69-67 win. Connersville then turned the tables on the Patriots as they defeated them in the sectional first game, winning 49-45.
This season, head coach Rodney Klein is looking for leadership. "Anytime you lose a groups of seniors that play significant minutes, they are hard to replace," Klein said. "We have a lot of players that recieved minutes on the varsity that are returning and some will move up from the junior varsity that will help also."
Klein says the schedule this year will have differant obstacles and challanges including teams that will be ranked in their particular class and this year's sectional field will be loaded.
"We always start the season with lots of goals but I think the main goal for us will be to improve every week and to be playing the best basketball by tournament time."
Emotions run high when the beginning of the season is just around the corner. "The most common emotion(s), I would say would have to be excitement and pain," junior Chris Malone said.
Malone considers himself a physical player and adefensive contributor rather than a scorer. "I would like to be the most physical player on the team, shoot 60% from the field and 70% from the foul line," he added.
The team this year will have to do without the main players that graduated from CHS last year including, Matt Holbrook, the 90th leading scorer in the state last season.
The season the Spartans will be lead by two top scorers in the state from a year ago, Chris Bloom and Matt Howard. Howard also contributed 11.8 rebounds per game, which was good for 8th in the state.
Coach Klein is in his 7th year as head coach of the Spartans. Klein has compiled a 61-67 record since taking the job from Howard Renner after the 1999 season.