The Greendale boy basketball team has started their season and their current record is 4-6. Their biggest wins of the season have come against Shorewood and St. Frances.

Stand-out players have been seniors Noah Roder and Zach Sheridan, junior Tommy Fritsch, and freshman Devin Isaj.

While they have had some great games, they have also faced some hard competition, namely the Pewaukee Pirates, who are ranked number one in the area. They lost 96-61. “Pewaukee was definitely the toughest team we will face, definitely the most loaded team in the conference,” Roder said. 

After that loss, they had many different things to work on. “We overall as a team had to take better care of the ball and too many turnovers that led to easy buckets for Pewaukee. If we get past those factors we will be a powerful team,” Roder said.

Freshman Devin Isaj is a starter for the Panthers and is also a very dominant player on the team. “It feels good to be able to get the opportunity to start on varsity as a freshman,” Isaj said. “My goal for the season is to have many wins and way more than losses.” 

Roder has many goals for himself and the team this season as well. “My main goal this season is definitely to win more conference games than last year, also to just have fun as a team and compete with some of the best teams in the state. Also building the team chemistry and where we will all be a family and have each other’s backs,” he said. 

Junior Grayson Sinks thinks that the team has many things to work on to get better and win some more games. “I feel like we need to play better defense. Everyone loves to play offense, but when we get to the defense’s side, it goes downhill.” 

Sinks also has many things that he personally thinks he can work on. “I feel like I can be more of a leader and make the team work harder in every practice on mostly the defensive side.” 

The Greendale basketball team has had a couple of challenging opponents but the most challenging one to Sinks was the Pewaukee game. “Pewaukee was definitely the most challenging for us. There is just an overall great team every year. They have two kids going D1 and some going D2, so it is always very hard when they have guys with skills like that.”

Senior Danny Hanlon has played four years of high school basketball and he has had many great memories. “My favorite memory of basketball is when we celebrated in the locker room after we beat Ike sophomore year,” he said.

He agrees with his teammates that Pewaukee was the hardest competition. “The toughest competition this year has been Pewaukee. They are a powerhouse team with many very talented players. Some other tough teams have been Wisconsin Lutheran and Pius.” 

The team recently lost to Greenfield 61-53. “Against Greenfield, we could’ve done a lot of things better, but mostly all of our intensity needed to be amped more than it was and we need to play better defense and move the ball down the court and score,” Hanlon said.

Hopefully the team is starting to turn this around, as they beat Cudahy. 71-62 on Tuesday night. The Greendale basketball team has been having some ups and downs but they have not stopped working and continue to get better and better every day. Hopefully, fans will see them in the playoffs as the season moves on.