Intense practices key Elmont's success

Elmont’s boys’ basketball team has no secrets behind why it’s so dominant with an 11-4 start (8-1 in Conference AA4) to the season.
Despite a 58-53 loss to Roslyn Jan. 18, being stagnant isn’t part of the Spartans’ vocabulary.
“We’ve continued to get better, which is good,” head coach Ryan Straub said “Really just trying our best to build one day at a time. Our guys really compete in practice; we’re not flat just going through the motions, we’ve been really competing and getting after it practice, so that’s driven a lot of our success so far.”
What makes the team so potent is their two-fold approach: “Our biggest thing, I think, is our defense,” Straub said. “We traditionally play pressure defese and try to make teams uncomfortable.”
The second half lies in the fact that it doesn’t stop at the defense; the offense seems almost limitless with the depth that Elmont has.

“We have about 10 or 11 guys who really are in our rotation and get quality minutes, so overtime starts to wear teams down a little bit,” Straub creditted. “We don’t just rely on our starters, we have a lot of help off the bench as well, so our defense and our depth have been huge for us.”
Senior guard Cassius Moore has been dynamic while pacing the offense at 15.5 points per game. He’s drained 31 shots from behind the arc. Senior forward Osagie Ekhator is averaging 11.5 points and cleaning up the boards (8 rebounds per game) along with senior 6-foot-5 center Ebubenna Nwabudu (8.3 ppg, 7 rpg.) Senior guard Gemere Frias-Walsh and junior forward Nassir Edwards are chipping in 7 and 5.5 ppg, respectively.
What may be hidden from the naked eye, is that even with sporadically injuries, Straub says the collective next-man-up mentality pushes players to go beyond playing the spot they’re accustomed to.
“Overall, that’s really a big positive in the long run, to make our kids be more versatile and be able to play multiple positions out there on the floor,” Straub said, refusing to let his team see anything other than opportunity to better themselves. “What is a little bit of a challenge really has helped us develop throughout the season.”
Learning what works and what doesn’t isn’t just a metaphor for what happens on the hardwood – it also extends to the characters of the young men playing in uniform.
“Our kids have learned to be leaders, which is huge,” Straub explained. We’ve had a lot of we’ve had good senior leadership and we also have a bunch of juniors who have played multiple years of varsity basketball.”
Straub cited Khalil Muhammed, a junior point guard who comes off the bench, saying that his contribution to the team simply can’t be quantified by the boxscore.
With five more games before playoffs, iincluding this Saturday’s trip to New Hyde Park, it’s business as usual.
“We’re doing what we do, we’re not really doing anything too crazy; we just know we want to be playing our our best basketball in February,” Straub said. “We’re just trying to stack one day on top of another [and] get better every single day.”