O’Dea Basketball Season Preview: What We Can Expect

SEATTLE – With the season opener in a few days looming on the horizon, all eyes are set on O’Dea basketball. Once again, the Irish are led by Head Coach Jason Kerr in his 9th season at the helm coaching the team. There’s a lot to look forward to this upcoming season, but the main goal is to bring back the state championship to 802 Terry Avenue. There have been some key losses from the 2022 class, but this team has all the talent in the world to win a state championship.

Key Losses: The Irish had four seniors on the team last year but the biggest losses of them all were guards Takeo Staten-Sylvester and Owen Moriarty. Along with now senior guard Mason Williams, Moriarty was a consistent top scorer on the team (13.1 PPG) with many games where he touched double digit points. His ability as a two-way threat to drive towards the hoop or shoot beyond the arch, was something not many teams were able to defend. An interesting trend to point out is, whenever Moriarty would have a down game offensively the team would struggle, but when he was on point, the offense would thrive. With that being said, it should be interesting to see how the team pans out this year.

The Current Team: Despite the key losses of Staten-Sylvester and Moriarty, the Irish have arguably the most well-rounded roster in the Kerr era. This season they will be led by senior point guard and Eastern Washington University commit, Mason Williams. Williams, as mentioned earlier was one of the leading scorers on the team with Moriarty. Expect to see an even better season from Williams at the point. But what makes this team especially unique compared to every team in Washington, is the amount of size overall the team has. The frontcourt is led by 6’10 junior Miles Goodman, who has made significant strides in his development over the offseason. Goodman was a role player as a sophomore last year coming off the bench who started to get even better later in the season. With his improvements over the course of the year last season being great, his growth physically and in his game over the summer outweigh that. The thing is, it's not just Goodman that dominates down low, its everyone. Along with him, there’s 6’7 senior and Air Force commit, Miles Clark, 6’8 junior Malcolm Clark, and four other guys who are 6’5 or taller. Most teams are lucky to have a player 6’6 or taller, while O’Dea has three of them, and if they’re able to execute, it’ll be almost impossible to score down low. “We just have to keep doing our thing, whether it’s getting blocks or preventing scores, the least amount of points we give up is the goal, game in, game out” senior Miles Clark said. The big men holding the fort down low will be a key to the Irish success this season.

The Schedule: As everyone in the state knows, the Metro League is by far the best and hardest league to play in all of Washington. Well that just got even harder with the new schedule changes for this upcoming year. Instead of playing every team in the Metro League once, the Metro League is split up into top 8 and bottom 8, meaning the Irish have to play the other top 7 teams twice. Couple that in with the one of the hardest holiday tournaments in the country, the Torrey Pines San Diego tournament right after Christmas, the Irish have the gauntlet to go through this regular season. Despite the hard schedule, the Irish are not backing down. “It doesn’t matter who we play, if we execute and give 110% every time out there, we know we can do well” Clark said. The Irish open regular season play this Tuesday vs. Timberline.

With the main goal being a state championship obviously, but it's going to be like a warpath to get there considering what the team is up against. If anyone has the group of guys to go out there and dominate in the state, it’s the boys on First Hill.