Team chemistry is brewing at Southside High School.

The Mavericks (4-2) have had their ups and downs a month into the 2017-18 season.

Southside (4-2) plays Waynesville (Mo.) (0-1) today at 5:30 p.m. in the first round of the Arvest Bank Tournament in Rogers. Southside reached the finals of the Citizens Bank Classic last week in Van Buren.

Senior Ollis Brewer likes the direction the team his headed in.

“This team we have is just a fun group; we all enjoy having each other,” Brewer said. “It’s like we never want to leave and after practice; we always want to hang out so it makes it that much easier to have chemistry on the court.

“Everyone is starting to understand there role in the court and we feel that we have a deep bench, and we can use that to our advantage.”

After last season’s 6-18 campaign, which saw the team drop 18 of its final 21 games, the Mavericks played well — most notably with a deep bench.

“Yes, depth has played a big role for us,” Southside coach Charlie Cooper said. “To play defensively like we want to play, we have to have 10 guys in our rotation. We have narrowed it down to 12 right now, so hopefully we will be able to know more after this tournament.”

Brewer led the Mavericks 15 points in Saturday’s 61-43 loss to Cabot. He had a career-high 31 last month against Subiaco.

But balanced scoring from Ike Moore, Dillon Hamilton, Taye Gatewood and Desond Marshall has also been a key. And it doesn’t stop with them, either.

“I feel like the biggest keys if we want to win this weekend is free throws and rebounding,” Brewer said. “We’ve missed a lot of front ends (free throws) that could’ve helped us, especially the Cabot game.

“Rebounding, we’re always seeming to lose that battle badly in the first half, but even it up the second.”

“We have to make defense our offense,” Cooper said. “We need to get easy buckets off transition offense and transition defense. We have to score the ball better than we did against Cabot last Saturday. We only made 4 baskets in the first half, and you’re not going to beat many people shooting like that.

“Same thing with free throws. We left a lot of points on the line last weekend.”
