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ast season, the men’s basketball team won its second consecutive IHSAA State Championship by shutting opposing teams down on the defensive end. This year, even with a different roster, the focus will be the same, according to forward and senior Zach McRoberts: Defense is the priority.

McRoberts said the team spends large amounts of time in practice to improve its overall team defense.

“It’s everybody buying into the idea and playing as a team defensively. That can be a huge help to be able to rely on your teammates to help you out on defense when you need it,” McRoberts said. “It’s a toughness thing, where you’re not going to let your guy drive by you or let your guy get a rebound. It’s a mentality, and I think we have that pretty well instilled here.”

According to Maxpreps.com, a high school athletic website sponsored by CBS  Sports, last year the team gave up an average of 46.7 points per game. The average points per game given up by the other members of the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference (MIC) was 57.2. Carmel, however, was not nearly as prolific on the offensive end as some other teams in the MIC, scoring an average of 60.1 points per game compared to the MIC average scoring of 62.2 points per game. Despite that discrepancy, McRoberts said the ability to win games on the defensive end is implemented by coaches.

“You either buy into (defense first) or you don’t play. You have to be able to defend well or you won’t play,” McRoberts said. “It’s all about defense.”

Head Coach Scott Heady said players learn the importance of defense when they first start playing here.

“I think our young guys know, if you’re going to play, you’ve got to defend and you have to be tough or you may not play as much,” Heady said. “I think it’s easier for younger guys to buy in because we’ve had success with our defense first mindset in the past. It’s become an expectation.”

Guard and junior Ryan Cline said defense is the main priority for the team every game. Cline said that the defense helps the team win lower scoring games when other teams struggle.

“We always have a defense-first mindset,” Cline said. “We say that defense leads to offense; we just get stops and then try to take care of the ball on offense.”

While the team’s identity will be the same, there is no denying that the makeup of the team this year will be much different, according to McRoberts.

“Losing Michael (Volovic) and James Crowley, our primary scorers from last year, I personally am going to have to score more,” McRoberts said. “As a team, we’re a little longer and a little deeper than we were last year. I think we’ll be a better rebounding team this year due to our length. We’re going to defend hard and rebound like usual.”

Heady said the team’s length will be a definite asset, and that toughness will be key to the team’s success this year as well.

“As long as we’re as tough as we’ve been the past couple years, that’s the main thing. Hopefully we can use our length to our advantage as long as we continue to play with a defensive toughness and play together. We’ve got a lot of wing players that are 6’4”, 6’5” and long, and we can really use that to our advantage.”

While different in some ways, Heady said he sees many similarities between the past two year’s teams and this year’s team.

“They have an overall similar attitude and how they approach practice every day is the same. They’re very much a together team; they understand we’re going to have to do this together,” Heady said. “There are a lot of similarities from the last two years. They’re unselfish, and they understand that it’s about the program and the team.”