Although the season isn’t getting any longer, the Kansas State High School Activities Association now allows basketball teams an extra three games on their schedule.
Panthers coaches and players embraced it.
“KSHSAA adding these games is a welcome change,” boys coach Brett Flory said. “Hopefully we will add even more in coming years.”
Missouri’s state champ, Oak Park, had a final record of 32-1 for its 2024-25 season. With the added games the most games a team could play in Kansas is 28 by advancing to the state championship.
“Twenty was by far the lowest number of regular season games when you compared it to Missouri, Oklahoma, etc. – 23 is still low,” Flory said.
The KSHSAA board of directors had concerns about players’ health and the increasing time out of school that would come with adding games.
“These days players are playing in AAU circuits every weekend, they play so many games in a summer. I’m not worried about adding three games, we will probably get more injuries in practice than in games,” Flory said.
The boys added a showcase in Kansas City, and the girls added a home game as well as two games at Kansas City Piper.
“I think the best part is how we get to compete at a higher level during the regular season,” senior Macayla Askew said. “We get to study ourselves when we’re faced with new teams that we haven’t played over the past few years.”
One of the big reasons KSHSAA was hesitant to add games in the first place was because of the added work for administration in schools. Due to getting into these showcases not much changes for the Derby staff, but at other schools that is not the case.
“We at Derby, actually got into showcases hosted by other schools, so this won’t affect admin/staff as much. We had to find dates that our teams could play, but that’s about it,” athletic director Russell Baldwin said.
The season not actually getting longer will make for a tough time when trying to find time for make-up games.
“Since there are more games in the same amount of time, another challenge will be trying to reschedule games if we cancel due to bad weather,” Baldwin said.
The showcase that the boys entered invited eight of the top teams in Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas.
“We wanted to add the highest level games we could,” Flory said. “We may or may not be able to win our three games, but even if we lose all three, the experience of competing against elite teams will help us improve much more than blowing out three bad teams around here.”
Playing tough games doesn’t necessarily mean losing for this squad.
“I think we have a really good shot at winning at least two games,” senior Cale Clingan said. “It’s not crazy to say we could go 3-0, but I am confident to say we will win two games.”