Santa Fe Boys Basketball Ready to Tip Off Season

The Santa Fe High School boys basketball program is out to continue its dominance despite taking on the underdogs role.

The Raiders went 5-0 in Class 4A-District 5 last season and 17-11 overall. Their season came to an end in the state regional semifinals when they fell 67-52 to Eustis.

The Raiders are facing the struggles of being undermanned and rebuilding team chemistry. They lost many to graduation and then lost  leading scorer Antonio (A.J.) Hall, who transferred to Gainesville High School. Hall has been a leading scorer for the Raiders for the last three seasons and averaged 12.2 points per game last season. 

Santa Fe  coach Glen Banks has planned a new approach this season.

“We have a brand new team so we have to come together, we had seven seniors, our top scorer from last year transferred over to Gainesville High School,” Banks said at Friday’s Prep Zone high school basketball media day at GHS.  “So we need to figure out some new guys, who’s gonna do what, who’s gonna step up, so it’ll be a long season, but I do believe by the end of the season if we gel  we will be fine.”  

The changes to the Raiders is noticeable to Banks.

“We have a group of juniors, it’s probably nine of them,  they are gelling,” Banks said. “They came in as freshmen together and they have stuck with our program. I’m just waiting to see the payoff.”

Santa Fe has been coming together as a team since the summer.

“I think they had a let down, because A.J. left and went to GHS and they didn’t know who could be the alpha or who was going to lead,” Banks said. “So during the summer it was a learning curve but now you see all those guys stepping into that role and it’s super awesome to see.

“Last year I feel like we had a team that could go farther than we went but we were not as good as we should have been defensively and rebounding, so those are some of the emphasis for this upcoming year, defense and rebounding.”

The team is in its early stages of rebuilding and is counting on the coaching staff and their junior leaders to hold it together and remain dominant in the district.

The Raiders open the regular season at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Suwanee . 

Category: Basketball, High School Sports, Santa Fe High School