The Lancer boys basketball team begin its 2016-2017 coming off of a successful season from last year. The team finished 21-8 and won their third straight District championship against Parkway Central.

However, many members of last year’s team graduated, leaving the new team to take over. They lost their leading rebounder and scorer in Luke Finley and leading blocker in Will Stonecipher to graduation.

This year’s squad includes six seniors: Kory Brubaker, Bradley Cox, Charlton Day, Adam Flinn, Jake Messer and Steve Pennington, seven juniors: Thomas Antolik, Brendan Boyd, Cameron Carpenter, Chris Harstick, Andre Roberts, Spencer Stewart and Gavin Stulce and two sophomores: Trey Griffey and Jack Schmitt.

Last year’s head coach Scott Allen retired from his coaching duties in order to dedicate more time to his family and other needs. The head coach heading into this season is last year’s assistant,  Matthew Landwehr.

Landwehr said, “It’s been different in the fact of that I have different responsibilities, and the guys look at you in a little different way because the ultimate end decision ends and rests with you. Coach Allen afforded me, the past eight years that I’ve been working with him, to take on some responsibility, to allow me to understand the administrative side of things, that allowed me to assist him and allow him to do his job running our program, but at the same time, allow me to learn things that a head coach has to go through, which has really assisted me with my transition to being a head coach because they’re so many more administrative things that you have to do. On top of running the team, planning practice, and the important stuff that goes into taking care of the guys, which is what we really care about, so being able to know how those things work, whether I did it or not, ultimately allowed me to kind of transition a little smoother to taking that over and then obviously taking care of the guys.”

Only seven members of last year’s team return, so the leadership roles on the team look to shift with the vastly different team.

“I fully expect Adam Flinn is going to take on a really big role with our team. He made first team All-Conference, first team All-District he’s going to be top of the scouting report for just about everybody, so I think Adam knows he has to have that leadership role. But it doesn’t just have to be him. We have experienced guys in Jake Messer, Kory Brubaker and Steve Pennington, and we have a good group of juniors. I think it’s really important that it isn’t just one guy. We have 15 guys, even guys who won’t play as much have an important leadership role being supportive of their teammates getting in practice and being scout team, all of that is leadership and really it’s a collective effort” Landwehr said.

Last year, Flinn averaged 11.1 points per game, second highest on the team, made the most number of threes throughout the season and was the team’s assist leader. The most efficient player in field-goal percentage was Brubaker, also a returning senior.

The team’s first game is against Springfield Central. Springfield Central is an unfamiliar opponent for the most part for Lafayette, as the two programs have little history with each other.

“We’ve got to put them in a spot to succeed. Players make plays, and we have players who make plays.  They’ve been working really hard in practice and they’re ready to play someone else. We’ve been playing each other for a month, so we’re really excited to play somebody else and see where we’re at and make adjustments and go from there,” Landwehr said.

The game is at Springfield-Parkview on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 7 p.m.