By todd traub
Leader sports editor
Jacksonville boys basketball coach Vic Joyner is a team player, so he is hoping he is without the biggest part of his team a while longer.
Thanks to the Red Devils reaching the football playoffs, Joyner will have to do without seven players as he prepares to start the season.
“My basketball team right now basically is football,” Joyner said at Tuesday’s Red and White games at the Devil’s Den. “I’ve got seven guys down there right now who are an integral part of what we need to do. So right now the jury is still out.
“We don’t exactly know what we’re going to be until we get those guys together to mix them in the gym.”
Jacksonville had six football victories and was already a postseason lock heading into Friday’s regular-season finale at Marion and was bidding for a second seed from the 7A/6A-East Conference and a possible first-round playoff bye.
With conference champion West Memphis, a 7A team, moving on the 7A playoffs, it would open things up for either Jacksonville or Marion to take a 6A second seed, behind Jonesboro, with a victory.
That would be good for the football team because the players would get a week of rest, but it would extend the time Joyner would be working with his basketball team less than intact.
“Who knows when they’re going to get in the gym?” Joyner said.
But that’s okay, Joyner said. In the interest of overall athletic success for the Red Devils, he is willing to bide his time and is rooting for Jacksonville to go all the way to the 6A championship game at Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium on Dec. 4.
Even if that means he doesn’t have his whole roster for today’s jamboree in which Jacksonville will play Sylvan Hills and North Pulaski, of the 5A-Southeast Conference.
“Thank God they’re still playing,” Joyner said of the football team. “I’d like to see them win a state title.”
Among the key basketball players still in football pads are senior receivers Jamison Williams and Xavier Brown, sophomore quarterback Aaron Smith, sophomore receiver Kevin Richardson and junior receiver David Johnson and sophomore tight end Brandon Brockman.
“In my 22 years of coaching, seven kids and two or three starters down there is the most I ever had in football,” Joyner said. “So this will be the first time we’ll be kind of watered down like this early on. Normally I have 10 or 11 of my top guys in the gym.”
Among the returnees who have been practicing with the basketball team are leading scorer Raheem Appleby, a senior who was a member of the Red Devils’ 2009 state championship team; Xavier Huskey, a post player who got a few starts as a sophomore last year; James Akins, who played some “big minutes” last year, Joyner said, and Justin McCleary.
“The kids that are in the gym right now, they’ve been working hard,” Joyner said. “And who knows? They may put it together and mesh together and show well early in the season.
I don’t know, but they’ve been working hard since after Labor Day.”
Jacksonville was undersized last year but reached the 6A state tournament, though it failed in its bid to repeat as state champion with a 67-57, second-round loss to Watson Chapel.
Joyner said, with or without the football players, his post players wouldn’t be much taller than 6-2 and the Red Devils would be a small team again this year.
With that in mind, Joyner wants to build on today’s jamboree, which also includes Pulaski Robinson, Mountain Home, Little Rock McClellan and Stuttgart.
Action begins with the junior high games from 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., followed by the first senior high scrimmage between Pulaski Robinson and Mountain Home at 1 p.m.
Jacksonville plays the final two scrimmages, against Sylvan Hills at 4:20 p.m. and crosstown rival North Pulaski, which reached the 5A finals in 2009 and the semifinals last year, at 5 p.m.
“If we get out there and get our heads busted we’ll have a little bit of time to heal our wounds and teach a little bit,” Joyner said.
