Unfinished business

There was no dancing around the subject when Patrick Davis was asked how he would replace Mac Smith’s scoring and leadership from last season.

Davis didn’t give a clichéd answer about how each player is unique and will have to get a little bit better and play a little bit harder to adequately replace what Smith brought to the floor.

Smith played a role that is critical to each basketball team. He was the guy the Vestavia Hills High School boys basketball team could throw it to when it needed a bucket. He was the guy that could steady the ship when things went awry. 

With the graduation of two of the Rebels’ top scorers — Smith and Mitchell Langley — that onus is now on Luke Champion.

“We sit down in this office, and I say, ‘You’re doing it now,’” said Davis, entering his second year as coach of the Rebels. “I flat-out told Luke Champion … Those dudes are gone, so you can’t just be our lockdown defender and occasional scorer, you’ve got to be a lockdown defender and you’ve got to score the ball.”

Champion took advantage of the rule allowing homeschooled students to participate in high school athletics with the school they are zoned for, and he was one of Vestavia Hills’ top players a season ago. 

But Champion alone isn’t the ultimate key as to whether or not the Rebels can repeat last year’s postseason run, when they defeated area rival Hoover in the Northwest Regional Final to advance to the program’s first Final Four since 2011. 

The Rebels have at least eight key returnees and put together a strong summer, leading Davis to believe his team might have something for the competition once again this winter.

“I really like our team,” he said. “They’re a fun group to be around. They’re fun from the aspect that they’re smart kids. We can try a bunch of different stuff.”

The goal for the Rebels is obviously to get back to that point, and Davis said he has kept a keen eye out for any sign of complacency. But the team wasn’t satisfied with merely making it, and felt it should’ve defeated Auburn in the state semifinal. There is still unfinished business.

Davis said, “We had a fun run that we enjoyed, but we didn’t finish the job, a job that we felt like we could finish.”

On the floor this season, the Rebels will certainly be trying a few different things, as they cater to the strength of their personnel, notably a pair of big men in 6-foot-11 Breck Cuddy and 6-foot-8 Paul Michael Hargrove. Not many teams will be able to match the size of one of them, much less both.

“There are definitely some changes,” Davis said. “We didn’t overhaul everything. There’s still a lot of what we do that’s the same. But I’m big on [the idea that] we’re going to adjust our Xs and Os to our Jimmys and Joes. That’s how I think it should be done.”

Cuddy and Hargrove have both received interest from Division I schools in recent months, and Vestavia has the likes of Hunter Salmon (6-5), Michael Vice (6-4), Champion (6-4) and Collin Scollard (6-3) that all possess above-average height.

“They’ve really grown physically, they’ve gotten a lot stronger, their skill has developed a lot, so we’ve made it a point that we’re going to take advantage of the length mismatches we have on the floor,” Davis said.

The ability to mix things up is also something that Davis prefers. While the values and philosophy of the Rebels program remain true — “hard-nosed and just really, really physical” is how Davis describes his team’s trademark — throwing the occasional curveball keeps players and coaches alike engaged and on their toes.

“I like doing that, because it keeps it fresh for the kids, too,” Davis said. “There’s an element of you’ve got to do what you do every day, and there’s also an element of you’ve got to throw some stuff at them to keep it fresh.”

With that being said, Davis said the Rebels still plan to push the tempo on offense as much as possible, and credited his forwards for being “mobile bigs” that can run the floor effectively.

“[Fans] are going to see exciting basketball that’s up-tempo,” Davis said, “that’s physical, that’s imposing, where we’re trying to be the hammer and not the nail. Everybody likes pace, and everybody likes watching fast.”

It took some time for the Rebels to fully click as a unit last year. The first six weeks of the season were a bit of a struggle, but around Christmas, something clicked and set Vestavia Hills on a path to the BJCC in March.

Figuring out how to play within the system seemed to be a big part of that success, and Davis hopes that progress will continue this winter.

“We have a much better grasp on ‘fast but structured’ than we did at this time last year,” he said. “The draw is that our kids believe we’re going to win every single night, and those teams are fun teams to watch. People will enjoy watching this team.”

Vestavia Hills opens its season on Nov. 9, as it hosts Chelsea.