Young Onslow County teams find wins in experience at 2022 East Coast Invitational

The annual East Coast Invitational summer basketball camp in Jacksonville last week saw five Onslow County teams hit the court against some of the state’s best.

While an area team didn’t win the tournament, Swansboro took home a title in one of the consolation brackets. Here is what the area coaches had to say about their teams’ efforts.

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ECI 2022: Who to see, what coaches are saying about this year's East Coast Invitational

Jacksonville Cardinals

Jacksonville only won two games, but exceeded coach Sean Thompson’s expectations as the Cardinals try to fill holes after the graduation of all-area standout Shawn Jones.

“We were a little inconsistent, but I am happy with the way we competed,” he said. “We were in every game. and we know more about our team today than we did last week.”

Closing out games is one area the Cardinals look to address going forward.

“We had four or five sophomores play a lot of minutes and we had a lot of opportunities to win games, but we were unable to close them out,” Thompson said. “We have to find ways to win. Late in games we played not to lose.”

Living Water Warriors

Living Water was dealt a blow before the ECI tipped off as junior all-area player Derrick Benbow suffered an ankle injury. Still, the Warriors went 3-5, including a win over Jacksonville.

“Our record doesn’t show how hard we played,” coach Trevor Hardin said. “We figured out how hard it was without Derrick, but we had underclassmen step up and play a lot of minutes. It was refreshing to see us not quit and battle every single game.”

Junior Bo Koebbe is the second standout, and he performed well while not seeing much time on the sidelines, Hardin said.

“We are glad to be included in this tournament because it is such a great event and a great experience,” Hardin said. “We learned a lot about ourselves. I had five or six guys play their hearts out. A lot of players earned my trust and I think our program got better as a whole.”

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Southwest Stallions

Southwest was a late addition, but showed “a lot of potential” assistant coach Breon Hall said in going 2-6.

“I thought that we stated off slow the first two games, but then we got it together,” he said. “The most amazing thing is that we have a real young team with only one senior coming back, but the sky is the limit for these guys and later in the tournament they showed that they could compete.”

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Swansboro Pirates

Swansboro finished 5-5 after winning their bracket, defeating Trask in the final Sunday.

“There are only 32 teams and only four finish with a win so that was a good ending for us,” coach Brett McFarland said. “We got off to a rocky start, but by the fourth day, we were doing some good things.”

While area player of the year Gerren Jones graduated, the Pirates have several returning players from last year’s team that went 21-4 and advanced to the second round of the 3-A playoffs.

McFarland highlighted sophomore Jermaine Cunningham for his leadership and added that returning seniors Isaiah Bromelle and Garrett Panos and sophomore Jonah Holt performed well.

“I feel like we are further along than where we were last year, but we are not where we need to be,” McFarland said. “But, we are at a good point. We have some things we can build off of, but we still have holes to fill.”

White Oak Vikings

White Oak only had six players, but coach Chris Grimes liked what he saw from the Vikings, who were 2-6.

“I liked our overall competitiveness,” he said. “Wins and losses in the summer time aren’t always the important thing. It is more about growing as a group. The things we need to improve on is talking more on defense and being more connected as a group. But we didn’t have many upperclassmen. So to see how this team competed was very promising.”

Chris Miller can be contacted via email at chris.miller@jdnews.com. Follow him on twitter @jdnsports.

This article originally appeared on The Daily News: Onslow county teams attend East Coast Invitational team basketball camp