Risco hoops has sights on sustained success following summer work

Veteran Risco High School boy's basketball coach Brandon Blankenship instructs his team during a series of recent scrimmages at Delta High School.

Tom Davis ~ Tdavis@semoball.com

The adage in sports is often that staying on top of achievements can be more difficult than the climb upward, but veteran Risco High School boy’s basketball coach Brandon Blankenship envisions his 2024-25 squad being capable of doing that this coming season after watching the work his athletes put in this summer.

“We are bringing back a ton of experience,” Blankenship said after recently watching his team battle Puxico in a scrimmage at Delta High School.

The Tigers won 23 games last winter, which was the most for the program since 2019 (24 wins and an MSHSAA Class 1 District 1 championship), and Blankenship has eight players from that varsity roster returning.

“We had a lot of experience last year, too,” Blankenship said.

Risco will be led by five seniors in Landon Baker, Josiah Vazquez, Caden White, Reiley Calvert, and leading scorer, Sammy Smith.

“We probably don’t have as many shooters coming back,” Blankenship added.

Risco scored over 68 points per game, which was the most since that historic 2019 season, and Smith was a key to that production.

“We’re going to have guys who can step into that role,” Blankenship said. “It is finding those guys and giving them the reps in practice.

“We get up a ton of shots in practice. It is about getting the guys the ball in the right spots. We’ve got a lot of guys who can put the ball in the hole.”

The Tigers also return juniors Eli Rodgers and Owen Fortner, as well as sophomore Brayson Cullum.

“We’ll be pretty deep,” Blankenship said. “We’ll have a little more physical size than last year.”

That is evident in watching Risco play.

Fortner is 6-foot-4 and Smith plays everywhere on the court at 6-foot-3.

Calvert is another lengthy athlete at 6-foot-4.

“We’ve got size,” Smith said. “We should be able to rebound.”

The summer training schedule for Missouri high school athletes concludes on Friday with a "dead week" period next week.

The start of the official fall sports season opens Monday, August 12.