TAYLORSVILLE — The 2005-06 Salt Lake Community College men's basketball team finished the season pretty much where coach Norm Parrish expected it would.
With a young, inexperienced team, the Bruins fought their way to a solid 22-8 record (11-7 SWAC), which was good enough for a third-place finish in the Scenic West Athletic Conference.
"The season went well considering we had an almost completely new team. We lost 10 sophomores from last year and had only three returning players who averaged about three points and one rebound per game combined, so we definitely had to figure out quickly what kind of team we were going to be," said Parrish.
The third-place finish in the SWAC was quite an accomplishment for such an inexperienced team, but Parrish feels like his squad could have finished even higher.
"We lost eight games this year, and in five of those losses we gave the game away at the end with untimely turnovers and missed shots. To our kids' credit, we flat-out outplayed our opponents, but mistakes cost us some games," he said.
Statistically, the Bruins were arguably the most balanced scoring team in the SWAC. The team's leading scorer was freshman forward Gary Wilkinson at 14.6 points per game. He was followed by seven players scoring between five and 14 points per game. The Bruins had eight players who averaged at least 18 minutes per game.
"If you look at our numbers we were pretty balanced. Every night it was a different player stepping up. We had the luxury of any number of players stepping up and carrying the team on any given night," said Parrish.
The men's team was ineligible to participate in this year's Region 18 postseason tournament due to the inadvertent use of an ineligible player in the postseason three years ago. Regardless of the postseason suspension, however, the men's team had no shortage of highlights and accolades for the season.
"We beat every team in our conference at least once. We went up to Southern Idaho and beat them twice on their floor. That was definitely a highlight of the season since no one has ever done that to them before," said Parrish.
The young team led the SWAC in field-goal percentage and 3-point percentage, in addition to boasting the league's top defense. With seven of the team's top-10 players returning next year, Parrish feels like the future looks bright.
"We should be deep on the wings next year. We'll have to find a post player and we are losing our starting point guard, but I think we should be pretty good next year," he said.