The 2019-20 season was a difficult one for El Dorado’s boys basketball team.
The Wildcats missed qualifying for the state tournament after finishing fifth in the conference with a 6-9 record, but coach Gary Simmons has high hopes for the future.
Junior Jarmel Love, the team’s second leading scorer at 11.4 points per game and leading rebounder at 6.8 boards per game, will be back after earning All-Conference honors.
Isaiah Ramey, also a junior who was tabbed as an All-Conference selection, averaged 9.2 points per game as well as 4.9 assists per game.
David Ayree enjoyed a solid sophomore season, finishing third on the team in rebounding while averaging nearly 23 minutes a game.
“I thought Isaiah stepped up in a big way at point guard for us,” Simmons said. “He did what a point guard is supposed to do. He played great defense.
“When Brendan (Simmons) or Jarmel was hot, he made sure they got the ball. When he needed to score, he scored. He’s grown and he’s getting stronger in the weight room.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s got going on for next year. I think him playing college basketball is a real possibility. I thought his work habits were just outstanding.
“I thought David Ayree had a great sophomore year and really came on throughout the year.
“He started off and on most of the year and led us in scoring a couple of times, and I think there are big things to come from him in the future as well.”
The Wildcats will have to find a way to replace Brendan Simmons, an All-Conference selection who is graduating after leading the team in scoring and finished second in rebounding.
One area that hurt the Wildcats throughout the season was inconsistency.
“I thought there were times when we played real well, and I thought there were times where we didn’t,” Simmons said. “I thought not having Jordan Tubbs in the first semester really hurt us.
“We didn’t play any conference games in the first semester, but without Jordan, we had to play some guys more minutes than probably what we thought we would.
“We didn’t quite have that chemistry when he came back as what I thought we would have, so we were up and down.”
With the Arkansas Activities Association instituting a dead period due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Wildcats have had to stop their early offseason work.
“We have had some really good weeks of offseason leading up to that, really hitting the weight room again,” Simmons said.
“The thing that hurts us is we just had gotten back into our jumpsoles that we use.
“They’re like a plyometric workout. We jump on 3 1/2-, 4-foot boxes with them holding weights and doing basketball movements on them.
“It’s a really neat deal. The kids were really working hard on those because they see the benefits of that and your vertical increasing and getting faster. We were really excited to get back into those.”