Puxico hoops has its mojo on the rise heading into this off-season

Puxico varsity boy's basketball coach Bryant Fernetti instructs his team during a timeout in its game against Dexter this past season at the Bearcat Event Center in Dexter.

Tom Davis ~ Tdavis@semoball.com

Puxico High School educator and coach Bryant Fernetti has already immersed himself in leading the Indians’ baseball program this spring, however, the success that he and his basketball program achieved over the past two seasons since he arrived from Zalma High School bears some praise.

“I’m proud that the juniors and seniors,” Fernetti said, “when I first came in, they were open to my coaching, different philosophies, and different things.”

The Indians won 17 games this past season, which was the most in over 15 years, and that built on a 13-win campaign in Fernetti’s initial season in town.

“It can go one of two ways when you take over older kids,” Fernetti explained. “They can either resist it or they can accept it. Our kids did a really, really good job of accepting it.”

To put the 30 victories in perspective, Puxico won just 33 games over the previous four seasons before Fernetti’s arrival.

The past winter didn’t come easy to the Indians.

A mid-season four-game skid could have sent a less-focused group spiraling, but Fernetti’s kids closed the year having won five of its last seven games.

Fernetti said the foundation for success was laid by the kids in the summer months when no one is paying much attention to the program.

“Program-wide,” Fernetti said, “we always have really good numbers at all of our summer stuff. We play, probably, 70 games, in the summer. There was never a day where I was thinking ‘Dear Lord, I hope that we have enough kids.’

“I always knew that we were going to have enough kids to (compete) in JV and varsity games every time that we played.”

Puxico will lose just three seniors (Cole Barnfield, Duncan Crabb, and Eric Riddle), and have 23 student-athletes returning for next season.

“You can tell the improvement we made,” Fernetti said. “We have such big numbers coming up that I think that we will continue to do that.

“It just really makes my job easy. The effort, the dedication from all of the kids has been tremendous.”