BC basketball coaches preview upcoming season at media day

Oct. 6—The new Bakersfield College athletic complex is a work in progress, but it already looms on the horizon, easily visible from the stands at Memorial Stadium. Athletic Director Reggie Bolton says the facility should be ready "late next fall," equipped with its gym, weight room, wrestling room, four locker rooms and so on.

But Thursday's basketball media event held outside the Gil Bishop Sports Center, with the new building out of view, was chiefly focused on the present.

Men's basketball coach Aaron Chávez and women's basketball coach Paula Dahl are faced with raising their teams to an even higher standard after winning seasons in 2021-22.

This could be particularly challenging in Dahl's case given that she returns just one starter from last season's 19-7 squad, the first to reach the postseason in seven years, and already lost her top post player to a torn ACL on the first day of practice, one of several preseason injuries.

"We're going to play a very high-tempo game," said the veteran coach, entering her 29th season at the helm. "We're going to press."

She joked that her players "are not going to like me very much" because of the significant conditioning required to press up and down the floor. Dahl hopes the relentless defense will give her undersized team an advantage in a year where it may not have much of an inside presence.

"Last year, we couldn't press because a lot of people I had on the floor weren't quick enough, whereas this year, we're really fast," she said.

Sophomore Elise Enriquez, the lone returning starter, enters her third year with the program after playing during a COVID-shortened spring 2021 season. She has averaged 8.5 points per game, shooting 30 percent from deep, in 34 career appearances.

Third-year athletes with extra COVID eligibility were key for Dahl last year: "It just makes you realize how cool it would be to have like a four-year program," she said, "because I had players with that type of experience that they brought to the floor."

The team will need to build continuity when it gets healthy, but Enriquez and Dahl showed confidence in their culture.

"We all encourage each other, we explain their mistakes and they all accept criticism very well," Enriquez said.

Dahl said the team works before practices on building a rapport.

"I put them in groups and we talk about behaviors and championship-type programs," she said. "The way we do things, we have a lot of cohesiveness. I believe whatever cohesiveness we have off the floor will carry onto the floor."

And while the upcoming season is coming soon — next up is a scrimmage at Ventura on Oct. 22 — Dahl is also looking forward to using the big new building in recruiting to help keep local kids in Bakersfield: "You could be the first team to ever play in here, get the first bucket, all those types of things."

Chávez expressed similar enthusiasm, although he admitted to being sentimental about the current gym he's worked in for 18 years. He expressed gratitude to local voters and taxpayers for helping get the building funded, but noted that his program also needs to excel to lure players.

"Kids want to join a winner ... they want to join a program that's going to matriculate to the next level," he said.

Chávez's Renegades went 16-11 and fell just short of the playoffs, a familiar result for BC in recent years. The coach said his team needs to be better in close conference games but also expressed frustration about one particular result last season.

"We were supposed to play West Hills Lemoore here, and we had a flood in our gym," Chávez said. "And not being able to play them a second time kept us having 16 wins — we had already beat them once — (rather than) having 17.

"I think if we have 17 wins, we're probably in the playoffs, but I can't control a flood in the gym."

There is cause for optimism this season. Besides returnees like Isaiah Dockery, who spoke at media day, the experienced Renegade squad has added Wyoming transfer Terrin Dickey and Dustin Henderson, an Independence alum who briefly played at Porterville.

Chávez also has a new assistant coach in former Bakersfield basketball standout Jon Glover.

"Jon does a lot of stuff off the floor — mentorship, he owns a business, and some of our kids want to own businesses so it helps," Chávez said, "because coaching, we get so much caught up in 31 games, and we really forget that those 31 games is 62 hours of our life and there's the other part of it."

The men's team will take the floor for the first time Saturday for a road scrimmage at Cuesta.

Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.