Summer a great learning experience for Bulldogs

Talk about a learning experience. Folsom High's boys' basketball team played in five tournaments in June, but it's the two big ones at the end that left its mark. Folsom's varsity team played in tournaments in Stockton, the Bay Area, as well as in Folsom and went 11-1. At the end of the month, the team played in tournaments in Arizona and Orange County and went 4-4, going 1-3 in Arizona and 3-1 in Orange County. These top-level, super competitive tournaments were tough for everyone, especially the eight players on the team up from the junior varsity team last year. "A lot of those teams brought a lot of structure and strategy and did a lot of things you don't normally see," Folsom High coach Mike Wall said. "Some teams don't play man defense; they just play traps and zones. Going from junior varsity to playing in a high-level varsity tournament like that and trying to figure out all the smoke and mirror defense, it's just too fast. The guys learned a lot, though, and improved a lot by the end of the last tournament." The Bulldogs relied heavily on the five returning varsity players to lead the team: Joven Dulay, Scott Nardinelli, Alec Day, Jack Shull and Parks Weaver. All five played well, according to Wall. Those last two tournaments in Arizona and Orange County were tournaments certified by the NCAA, two of just a few on the west coast, meaning they were tournaments Division I college coaches could attend. That meant that the competition was high-level and the demand to get into and play in those tournaments was high. In Arizona, the Bulldogs were in the toughest of seven brackets of 16 teams, which is the main reason they only won a game and lost the other three. Folsom lost the first game handily, but they led all three of the other games at halftime before losing two of them, one by one point and another by two points. "We were playing full-length high school games," Wall said. "Usually in tournaments the games are played with running clocks and are shorter and are easier on your body. We were playing full-length high school games and playing four games three days, if you don't have a lot of depth like us, we just ran out of gas in the second half of those games." Wall was pleased with how the summer went. "We went 15-5 and I was very pleased with that," Wall said. "One thing we don't have this year is size and we had some trouble playing against team with size. "We played well and got a lot of out it. We improved a lot."