By Matt Gade

605 Sports

EDGEMONT — Coming into the start of the season, Edgemont Moguls head boys basketball coach Garry Darrow thought he’d have 11-12 guys on the basketball team.

Right now, the Moguls feature just five players and no bench.

“It's tough, because I fully expected to have 11 kids with the possibility of two more junior high kids coming up, and we ended up with what we got. I've got two kids injured right now,” Darrow said. 

With just five players, Darrow said they mix it up in practice. That sometimes includes mixing it up against the junior high boy or playing the girls’ varsity team.

“With the high school girls, sometimes we'll do a scrimmage, and then with the middle-schoolers, we'll just go through some, like, warm-up drills and some offensive and defensive workouts and stuff like that,” the Moguls lone senior, Chase Alexander said.

The Moguls feature one guy for each grade, eighth-grade on up.

With no guys to substitute in and out for his players, Darrow said he has to stretch out a game to give his players rest. 

“I let the refs know ahead a lot of times before the game, I'm going to stretch the time outs as long as I can, because I got five players, literally. So that's how I use almost all my time outs, just for that fact,” Darrow said.

Playing a full 48-minute game has tested the Moguls' endurance this season, with the team only getting more and more conditioned. 

“I can really tell from our first game in Philip, we’re four minutes in and we were gassed, whereas tonight they were doing good,” Darrow said after the Moguls game against Upton (Wyo.) in the West River tournament. “I didn't tell them, we're putting a full-court press on. That's something they're doing on their own. They just want to pressure it. And that's those boys just playing basketball.”

“At first, it sucked. But now that we've been doing it for a minute. It's getting easier,” Alexander said.

With a lack of depth, twice this season the Moguls had to cancel a game because one of their players couldn’t make it. 

Alexander said coach Darrow has been understanding when the players have conflicts and working around them.

Darrow said this isn’t the first time the Moguls struggled with numbers. 

Four years ago, when Darrow took over as the varsity coach, he said their numbers were a struggle, and a couple of times Edgemont had a player foul out and ended up playing 4-on-4 against the opposing team.

So far, the Moguls have been unable to garner a win, but despite that, Alexander said he’s just having fun getting to play basketball. 

“I’m just playing with my boys,” Alexander said. “Basketball is definitely my favorite sport. I'm just glad to be having this season and not having to go without a basketball team.”

The Moguls will meet Newell on the final day of the West River Tournament in their next game at the Barnett Center in Rapid City.