ANALYSIS: BHS Bruin basketball could be building for something special

By Mike Tupa

BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT

At 1-5 — including losses to Class 2A and Class 3A competition — and averaging approximately 38 points per game, the Tommy DeSalme Era in Bartlesville High School boys basketball seems to be off to a sputtering start.

I’m not trying to paint a happy face on the first five games. No team — no matter how young and inexperienced — can extract a mustard’s seed-size of joy out of this kind of rocky initiation.

Let’s be honest — DeSalme was not dealt a strong hand nucleus when he stepped away from a successful college coaching career to take charge of a Bruin program with so many issues with which to contend — scarcity of experience, absence of a marquee player, sparsity of height, negative momentum from the previous season, a rugged Class 6A landscape and a  need to reinvigorate substantial community support.

The fact he voluntarily accepted such a challenge is a testament to his character, his confidence in his ability to build success basically from scratch and his ability to help plug the program back into unquantifiable emotional essence known as tradition.

Okay, so it’s been a rough beginning, perhaps even a dismaying dawn to a new era.

But it’s just the beginning — a painful metamorphosis from preseason enthusiasm and youth-fueled optimism to the rocky reality of the severe and unmerciful price of hard work and uncompromising commitment to strict detail that has to be paid in order to build a successful destiny.

I believe the right components are there — and I believe in DeSalme’s formula — to develop Bruin basketball back into an elite power.

It might begin to happen this season. But as long as the team remains on the same climb of progress it will continue to push for the top of the mountain. It’s not the kind of process one can set by a clock. But by slow steps forward mingled with spurts of improvement I believe DeSalme can fulfill his vision. However long it takes, I believe the Bruins of the Class of 2028 — and perhaps even sooner — could elevate the program to the apex of achievement.

I think DeSalme is setting the stage. I see his emphatic emphasis on defense and in your ears pressure, his use of a double-digit number of players each game and the focus on the fundamentals of rebounding and passing as like a sculptor trying to fashion something special. 

But there still are growing pains. Growing pains are needed — they’re the only way to develop the calloused toughness that separates averageness from greatness. That’s as true in other parts of life as in basketball.

I salute Nash Zervas — the lone senior — for filling the shoes of leadership and responsibility during this trying period. I hope — much for his sake — the Bruins will begin to find that consistency and traction this season that will bring rewards of serious headway.

I salute all the players that continue to give their full effort, that build up their basketball I.Q., that discipline themselves both technically and emotionally to be true and classy warriors no matter the trials or pressure of becoming.