Prep boys’ basketball: Folsom fundamentals lead to fun — and a NorCal tourney victory
At Folsom High School, down the hall a bit from the gymnasium, there is the newish basketball team room. The most striking thing is the whiteboard, dotted with instructions.
After games, coach Mike Wall takes a seat, surrounded by sweaty and spent Bulldogs players. In defeat, the roundtable discussion is on what went wrong and what the team can learn from it. In victory, it’s the same sort of dialogue, only with a lot more cheer and clapping. Everyone has an open forum to commend a teammate for a good screen, a big shot, a nifty pass, the theme being that fundamentals matter, then, now and forever.
On Tuesday night in a CIF Northern California Division I playoff opener, Folsom pulled away from Dublin 64-50, and the postgame chatter was lively. Cheers for the screens. More claps for the box-outs. Hail to those who found backdoor cutters. A yay-for-victory sort of mood.
Wall is a demanding coach who expects effort and the simple things that make this sport a joy. He’s not about to let up. Those ingredients have made him one of the region’s very best coaches over 20 years with a host of championships. It all starts with fundamentals, since the sport started, and he’ll swear by it.
“It will never change,” Wall said. “Offense is the most inconsistent thing in this sport, and the lower you go down in level, to high schools, the more it can be inconsistent. If you do the fundamentals, do all the little things, eventually, it’ll add up to big things.”
Wall yelped in that postgame scene from his seat, “Loved the screens!”
The coach added, “This room is where we game reset. We acknowledge the unsung hero, or someone appreciates a good play.”
Or when guys bounce back big. In a Sac-Joaquin Section semifinal loss last week to eventual champion Modesto Christian, two key Bulldogs went scoreless — Miles Macayan and Jake Thoensen.
Against the Gaels of Alameda County, Macayan, a senior guard, went for 21 points, and Thoensen, a senior forward, had 12. The team’s best player, Brycen Shackelford, was typically solid with 14 points and 12 rebounds. The 6-foot-5 senior forward said he appreciates when coach Wall speaks his mind, when he challenges players to be better, to play to their ability. And to set screens and box out as if your season depended on it.
“Everything he says about all of that is right,” Shackelford said. “He knows what he’s talking about. When we’re at our best, we move the ball well, fluid, and we play good defense.”
Shackelford averages 17 points for the Bulldogs, who moved to 24-6 and will host Clovis North of the Fresno region on Thursday. Shackelford said he is soaking in every bit of this season, considering there was no postseason a year ago due to the pandemic.
He said he knew basketball was his sport by the time he entered high school, working tirelessly on conditioning and agility.
“I was so clumsy,” Shackelford said. “I just kept working. We just want to win. Winning is fun.”
Shackelford is versatile, able to handle the ball, score on long jumpers or to pound away inside. A 3.8-GPA student, he plans to study business finance in college and play ball. Where, he’s not so sure yet.
“He’s a good kid, a good all-around player, a good leader, and he’ll be a nice college player,” Wall said.
Wall said the theme and whiteboard talk for the next game will be a familiar tune: to be in sync, to trust one another on the floor, stressing that the body of work is better than any individual.
Tom Costello understands this. The longtime Dublin coach also heads a fundamentally sound program, and he will field one of the top teams in Northern California next season with a host of returners. His school battled Sacramento powerhouse Sheldon in an entertaining CIF NorCal Open Division game two years ago, a loss, just as the pandemic started to cast an ominous shadow. No games were played after that one in 2020.
Costello’s best player — Courtney Anderson — scored 23 against Folsom. His favorite player is his son, T.J. Costello, and the burly 6-1, 235-pound senior three-sporter did all the right things: screens, passes from the high post, defensive hustle. Coach Costello said this season was a bonus for everyone who played this winter, a gift after so much nothing a year ago.
“It finally feels kind of normal,” he said of the season. “It feels like basketball again. As a coach, this is what you want for your kids, to be on a road trip, playing a good team, those experiences and memories.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2022 at 7:37 AM.