Nov 27, 2018 3 min read

Since Eugene Briggs became the Chartiers-Houston High School boys basketball coach in 2010, many of the Bucs’ teams could be centered around one player.

First, it was Alec Ferrari, who averaged more than 23 points during his senior season and is the school’s all-time assists leader.

Following Ferrari was two-sport standout A.J. Myers, who excelled at basketball and football. Myers is the all-time leading scorer in program history with 1,638 points.

The graduation of do-it-all guard Cam Hanley, who finished behind Myers in scoring (1,473) but is first in the program’s history for rebounds (777), steals (298) and made free throws (296), along with most of the C-H starting lineup from last season, leave no go-to guy yet.

“Spread the wealth,” Briggs said. “I’ve been down this path before. Probably the best team I have ever coached was in the 1990s at Fort Cherry. We had five guys averaging double figures and six guys who had 20-point games. Opponents cannot pick someone to take away. That makes it, on one hand, kind of easy.”

Chartiers-Houston ran away with the section title last year and played in its first WPIAL semifinal and state playoff games. The Bucs finished the season 19-7 after stringing together two six-game winning streaks and another five straight wins during the season.

“I think the thing that is going to be more important this year is taking it one day at a time,” Briggs said. “We can’t be looking too far ahead because we have to build every day. It’s going to be a day-to-day process.”

Briggs is tasked with replacing key players Andrew Clark, Zach Ford, Zach Southern and AJ Williamson with several players who haven’t seen a lot of varsity playing time.

The only returning starter from last year is Austin Arnold, a sophomore who cracked the starting lineup in the second half of the season. Junior Seth Dunn, who started as a freshman, and Evan Simpson are players Briggs expects to make an impact.

Chartiers-Houston has little experience on the court and several new opponents in Section 2-AA, including Bentworth, Brentwood, California, Carmichaels, Serra Catholic and Jeannette.

“It’s going to require me to try and lead from the sideline until we get things rolling,” Briggs said. “We should have a swagger because of how good we’ve been but we don’t.

“This might be the most athletic group of kids we’ve had here. There are a lot of kids who can run the floor, finish the play and defend. You will miss that guy that you go to. And there might be a guy (to do that) and we don’t know yet. We’ll just have to see what happens.”