The ADM Tigers boys basketball team will play in its season opener at home tomorrow night against rival Dallas Center-Grimes.

The Tigers won their preseason jamboree contest at home against Saydel a week ago, but after watching the tape of that game and subsequent practices, head coach Aaron Mager has noticed a significant improvement his team needs to make before the season officially gets underway.

“I think we need to play at another pace yet… our conditioning isn’t fully there to where we want it to be.  Our guys want to play at kind of a “breakpoint” speed and we’re not there yet as far as repping that out, so I need to demand that more in practice where we’re sprinting the floor better, we’re sprinting to our spots and our pressures better.  We’re kind of three-quarter speed sometimes out there and then we play in bursts… we need to make those bursts longer.”

The Tigers might be lacking the conditioning level that their head coach wants at this point, but at the same token, Mager says the single aspect of the jamboree win he was most pleased with, was his players’ effort.

Effort is something Mager will need from his bunch on a nightly basis this season, as ADM will have to find ways to hide its biggest team deficiency: a lack of height.

“I think our tallest guy is about 6’2” or 6’3” and we only have two or three of those guys.  Everybody else is kind of in that 6-foot or less realm, and that’s going to be… it is what it is.  You can’t do anything different other than play better position basketball, so boxing out, being in good position–getting around posts if they post us up.”

While he is primarily a man-to-man defensive coach, Mager says it is likely his team will play more zone defense than normal this season to counter the height that bigger teams might throw at them.

Whatever defense the Tigers play tomorrow, expect it to be a great season-opening game against their rivals in DC-G.  We’ll have coverage of tomorrow’s boys/girls varsity doubleheader beginning at 5:45 on 107.9FM, KKRF.