Boys basketball: Raiders aim to be contenders in Pine to Prairie Conference

LAKE PARK – Senior Satchel McDonald is excited to see how his senior basketball season plays out. Under second-year head coach Landon Schultz, Lake Park-Audubon is looking to shake things up in Section 6A and the Pine to Prairie Conference.

"I am insanely pumped," McDonald said. "I'm ready to go to battle with these boys. I have been hooping with the seniors. This is the first time we have had three seniors since the 2019-2020 season. It's a big change, and I'm pretty excited to have that experience on the court."

Schultz echoed McDonald's excitement. In his first year, the Raiders finished with an overall record of 10-16. They finished 4-7 in section play with a 5-8 conference record, good enough for a third-place tie with Norman County East-Ulen-Hitterdal in the South Division.

Entering the 2022-2023 season, Schultz is keeping the expectations high both on the court and off.

"We want our athletes to be students first in the classroom," he said. "Going off that, we want them to be leaders in the community and in the school. Some other team goals we talked about were trying to shoot for 15-plus wins this year. That has us with an above .500 record. Lake Park-Audubon has seen many seasons where they have been above 500. The last couple where they have been where they made state tournament runs."

McDonald also thinks that a winning record isn't necessarily a loft goal.

"We should definitely be above .500," he said. "We should go to war every night, and I don't think any game should be more than a 10-point difference. We should be able to hold off any opponent we play."

Both Schultz and McDonald know that a winning record is achievable with the pieces they have this year. Hitting 15 or more wins could potentially set up the Raiders for a chance to hang a banner.

A conference title is a good start for a program that's had an up-and-down past couple of seasons. The Raiders haven't made it past the first round of sections since the 2017-18 season. LPA made it to the fourth round of the Section 6A tournament that season before falling to rival Mahnomen-Waubun. Schultz is looking at the other successful teams across the state for inspiration on how to get his team back to that kind of success.

"We have to get back to that by establishing a brand that is consistent with good programs that are advancing far into March," he said. "We see a lot of teams in our section that are really fundamentally sound. They work their tails off defensively and don't turn the ball over. I think all those pieces right there is the recipe to make a deep run into March."

McDonald believes the team needs to work on their communication if they want to meet their expectations.

"We have to communicate," McDonald said. "Our communication the past couple of years hasn't been the greatest. After being in school and other sports with these kids, it has made it easy to communicate with them on and off the court… We got a lot of friendships built. We do a lot of things outside of school, like tubing, and golfing once in a while. Just fun things we get to do together."

Schultz and McDonald can't wait to compete in the Raider-Titan challenge on Jan. 7.

"That's definitely a date our guys really look forward to," Schultz said. "That's a date where we get all of our youth groups in the gym at one time. We play a Saturday full of games from the third-grade level to varsity on the same court over the course of a Saturday afternoon. So that gets to be a really fun, exciting Saturday. That's probably our biggest game we have circled on our schedule."

"Definitely the Raider-Titan challenge against Ulen," McDonald said of the game he's most excited about this year. "We lost by 40 last season. I had just come off of Covid the week before and had to sit out. We also had some other kids sit out because they were sick. The team was just out of it. It wasn't fun. Then two weeks later, we beat them by 30. This year, we want to take the shield back home."