By Meliyah Venerable / Special to The Delta

Even though it has lost a big contributor to the team, Missouri Valley College’s men’s basketball program still plans on having a successful season. 

The basketball team lost Larry Plummer this season, due to him running out of eligibility. Plummer finished last season as and All American and a member of the Heart Men’s Basketball All-Conference team. Last season, he was a team leader in games started (30),total points (574), points per game (19.1), minutes played (1034), field goals (191), three point goals (79), free throws (113), free throw percentage (.801), offensive rebounds (43), and steals (48). 

“Replacing Larry will not be easy,” senior Darrell Watson said. “But we are bringing in more scorers and more all around players to play.” 

The team has been working really hard in off-season training to have a successful season and to get a look at who could potentially fill a starting spot. While some may think of it as filling the role of Plummer, other members of think of it as them having a chance to step up as a player and being their own role in making the team successful. 

The team is currently 2-2 on the season. They have recently had a big focus on defense.

“A few things that we have done as a team to be successful this season is emphasize our team defense,” senior Tremont Moore said. “We believe that if we can lock down other teams on defense and move the ball well on offense we’re going to be hard to stop.” 

We are all hoping for Valley to have a successful season, and they boys are expecting to do nothing less than that.

“I think we will have a tremendous season,” Watson said. “I think we are going to shock a lot of people this year.” 

 Men’s coach Chad Lance declined to comment for this article.