Southridge coach Phil Vesel handed the keys to his junior backcourt — now he’s collecting return on investment

By Shane Hoffmann   

Phil Vesel approached his rising junior backcourt toward the end of the summer season with a message. 

“This is your guys' team now,” said Vesel, the Southridge boys basketball coach. 

The coach was addressing guards Carter Fortune and Kaden Groenig, instructing them that a step forward would once again be asked of them, that their leadership would be a non-negotiable.

And Fortune acknowledges he felt the pressure. Healthy pressure.

“You gotta own up to it because it's the truth,” he said. “(Carter and I) go way back … We know what it's like to lead a team. I think we were ready for it.”

Fortune and Groenig do go back quite a ways. In fact, their relationship — and its development since the two met in fourth grade and Fortune later convinced Groenig to transfer from the Century program to Southridge in late middle school — provided much of the foundation for Vesel’s bold assertion so many months ago. 

A big ask? Maybe for some juniors, but not ones with the level of experience as these two.

Fortune, a slightly bigger point guard, received playing time with the varsity team out of the gate as a freshman because of positional necessity. The 2020 Skyhawks were senior-laden. It took Fortune some time to settle in and even once he did, he wasn’t his usual aggressive self.

“I kind of wanted to get them shots,” he said. “When I passed the ball, I knew I wasn’t getting it back.”

Groenig didn’t play for the varsity squad until the final game of his freshman season, hitting some key 3-pointers during a 26-point comeback win. 

By the following season, the two point guards had moved to full-time roles alongside each other. Both averaged double-figures scoring while Fortune led the team in assists. Each took a meaningful leap maturity-wise, taking turns bringing the ball up the court while learning how to direct the offense, at times without assistance from the sideline.

But there was something about last season’s squad that just didn’t quite click for Vesel. Sure, the Skyhawks had the upperclassmen to balance out the sophomore backcourt — in fact, the team had seven seniors — but outside of Fortune, Groenig and a few others, the majority of the roster was comprised of transfers or players who otherwise hadn’t grown up in the Southridge system playing youth league with Vesel and Co.

And, Vesel contends, if you don’t grow up in their program, it’s challenging to pick things up on the fly.

So, despite graduating seven, turning over the team to the six-man junior class and resting the brunt of the expectations on his two guards, things are running a bit more smoothly for the Skyhawks (15-4, 5-2 Metro League) this season. 

In fact, by naming two players “the guys,” the coach actually subconsciously erased any sense of a true hierarchy that could create unhealthy team dynamics.

“This year it's just guys that I grew up playing with, guys that I knew since kindergarten, practically,” Groenig said. “The chemistry is definitely there.”

Vesel added: “We have a really close-knit group but it kind of starts with Carter and Kaden and the fact that they're good friends off the court as well.” 

Fortune has noticed it, too. These days, after bringing the ball up and swinging it around the perimeter, he knows there’s a good chance it’ll land back in his hands at some point. 

“(In terms of) basketball savvy and IQ and as far as kids growing up in our program, and knowing me and knowing how we play, that's been really good,” Vesel said. “We didn't have that last year because if you're brand new to the program, you don't really know me or what we do or how we play and so that took a lot of time to try to build. Whereas this year, we don't have to try to get everyone to buy in and get on board. That buy-in is already there.”

And that familiarity in the backcourt has certainly expedited the process. 

Early this season, the Skyhawks heavily relied on the two guards. They’d been there before and gotten more time on the court than any other remaining players. That meant Fortune and Groenig were looked to in the scoring department, especially. Often, the team lacked offensive balance, and while it didn’t hold the Skyhawks back from a 4-0 start, Vesel is much more comfortable with where they’ve progressed to now. 

“Some guys would defer to them and be afraid to shoot the ball, and I feel like we've gotten past that — we're more balanced,” Vesel said. “I feel like we're a complete team where we're not just reliant on two players or just relying on these guys. … We’ve become really unselfish.” 

Of course, it still starts with that duo, especially as the Skyhawks’ depth on the inside — a series of players with excellent size who are newer to the sport of basketball — continues to develop. The guards have been honing their communication with the bigs and working to get them touches early in games — touches they hope will go a long way toward them being comfortable to attack from the post in a league with as much size as the Metro. 

Fortune, now grown to 6-foot-3, is starting to embrace his size, too. He’s not only attacking the rim more, but working to bully smaller guards in the paint. Groenig, always slightly more undersized in his own right, continues to lean on the skill that got him to where he is today: his shooting touch from beyond the arc.

“They play great together,” Vesel said. “They look for each other. They trust each other.” 

He added: “They can coach on the floor for me and I don't have to worry about some of that on-court stuff — they just clean it up and take care of it.” 

It’s permitted Vesel and his staff to implement an offense that he said not many American teams try these days — at any level. The Skyhawks are running primarily off-ball screens this season. 

“The days of Bobby Knight’s five-out motion offense are kind of gone,” Vesel said. “It's more of a dribble-attack type of look for basketball in the United States, and we're trying to kind of go back and get screens for our guards to get them advantages to play out of.” 

“It's definitely harder than normal dribble-drive ball screens,” Fortune added. “But once you pick it up, it's so hard for the defense to guard and react to because you're just constantly off the ball and you just have to be paying attention at all times.”

It’s something Vesel would not have felt comfortable trying in past years, but given how tight this team is, and the savvy of those lead guards, he’s been weaving it in as the season progresses. 

The coach won’t let a promising start to the season distract from how much work is left to be done if the Skyhawks are to fully assert themselves among 6A’s top 10.

But for now, they’ve earned the right to be taken seriously. With their standout backcourt and unselfish play across the board, the Skyhawks, like their new offense, demand your attention.