Red Devil boys could make noise

A coach for all seasons, Bart Haflich, who guides the Noxon football team in the fall and both the boys and girls basketball teams concurrently in the winter, says the hoop season snuck up on him a little bit this season. In a good kind of way.

And that just might have been because of the great job he did in guiding the Red Devil football team into the State C playoffs for the first time in 18 long years. Although that did extend the football season a week, it did shorten the break between the gridiron and the basketball court a week as well.

“It’s basketball season and we are playing already,” he said sounding just a little surprised, “but we will be ready Friday.”

The Devils will open the season in the Tip-Off Tournament at Frenchtown, playing Clark Fork (the co-op between Superior and Alberton) at noon Friday and Lincoln at noon Saturday in the two-day tourney.

Haflich thinks the Devil boys could be a pretty good squad, if they are in the right mindset, after a 4-16 campaign in 2016-2017..

“If we play with the right attitude, we might sneak up on some people,” he said. “We have some pretty good experience and some pretty good size underneath. The rest is up to us.”

Seniors Cody Cable and Ethan Hinrichsen, juniors Alex Currie, Logan Wood and Edison VanVleet, and sophomores Rylan Weltz and Aiden Galloway return to form the core for this year’s Red Devils.