Young Trinity boys basketball building off last season's success

DOVER – When Ray Farmer took over as coach of the Trinity High School boys basketball team last season, he certainly didn’t expect that his extremely youthful group would take him on a ride to the Division I semifinals.

Trinity was still lacking a lot of significant varsity experience entering this winter, but the key returnees from last year’s run have combined with some fresh faces to get the Pioneers to impressively build onto where they left of last year.

The latest conquest for Pioneers came on Friday night, when they used a 19-0 run in the first quarter in cruising towards an 86-39 victory inside Ollie Adams Gymnasium. Trinity improved to 4-0 in Division I and has outscored its opponents by an average of 29.5 points per game.

“We’re super young and my mentality is to really advise the players that if you work hard and don’t take plays off you can play,” Farmer said. "I don’t care what grade you are and what age you are, if you play hard you can have a role with us. That really incentivizes the team and the individuals and we get results out of that.”

Point guard Shawn O’Neill is the lone senior on this year’s squad and is joined by sophomore Jordan Torres and junior Connor Bishop as the only Pioneers who played major minutes during last year’s 14-6 season that ended with a semifinal loss to eventual-Division I champion Pinkerton Academy.

“Last year was everybody’s first time playing big minutes in a game like that (semifinal), so we were definitely mad and we can’t wait to get back to that moment and we’ll be ready for it this time,” O’Neill said. “We definitely know how good we can be, especially with how hard we work in practice. We have a lot more confidence, but we still can’t underestimate anybody and give it our all every game.”

Farmer feels like O’Neill sets the perfect example for his team to follow and is willing to do anything for a victory. O’Neill scored 10 points on Friday, but set the tone atop a full court press that forced numerous turnovers that yielded a 25-8 Trinity lead after one quarter.

“He’s the heart-and-soul of the team,” Farmer said. “He’s a point guard who controls the team and on any given night whatever I need from him he’ll do. Some nights he needs to score 25 points and some nights I don’t need him to score and pass and there is nothing of a gripe from him. He gets it done with a smile on his face.”

O’Neill was able to facilitate game-high scoring of 17 points each from sophomore Jordan Torres and junior Xander McBournie, while sophomore Collin Charbeneau chipped in with 10 points.

Torres emerged into Trinity’s starting lineup as a freshman and is ready to take another step in his game.

“Last year I was a freshman and I had freshman nerves, freshman mistakes, but all that has gone out the drain,” Torres said. “I have to take a bigger role.”

Farmer has been impressed with the maturity Torres has displayed because teams know how much of a threat he is now, but his play-making abilities to get his teammates involved has opened up his game more.

“Now teams know who is,” Farmer said. “My challenge to him was yes, you’re probably not going to score as much because teams will be keying on you, but are you going to be a great enough basketball player to make the other four players on the court better.”