During the break, the Bakersfield College men’s basketball team has posted a record of 4-9 and 1-6 in the Western State Conference South Division. Overall the Renegades are 7-15 and are looking at their first losing season under head coach Rich Hughes.
Hughes and the Renegades have had four-straight 20-win seasons to go with five-consecutive appearances in the regional playoffs. But the playoffs won’t happen for the Renegades this season. If they win out, they will be tied for third in conference.
In the past five seasons under Hughes, BC has gone 119-44 for a 73 percent winning percentage. With this season included, the percentage drops to 68.
On Jan. 29, the Renegades fell victim to rival Citrus College by 17 points, 91-74. And the losses don’t get any better. BC has lost by 25 at Santa Monica, 12 at College of the Canyons, and by 10 to both West L.A. at home and at Citrus.
Hughes attributes the Renegades troubles to both lack of size up front and the defensive play of the team.
“Our problem from the beginning of the year has been defense and rebounding. We don’t rebound well and we don’t defend when we need to defend. That’s been our Achilles’ heel all year,” Hughes said. “We’re not going to overpower teams with our size, so we’re going to have to really work hard and really be good at our rotations on defense, and be really good at outworking people for rebounds and we just haven’t done that consistently.”
Hughes spoke on some of the other problems the team is having.
“For us right now, it’s all about energy. In the last couple of games, we’ve played 15-20 minutes of high-energy basketball and we don’t quite get that. We need 40 minutes of playing hard and energetic basketball. The things that we teach them in practice they have to translate it to the game and that’s not always happening.
“When it happens in the game we’re having success, but when they don’t put it together we struggle. Those couple of minutes of a game when we have a lapse, that’s the difference in the game, especially when you’re not as big as some of the other teams,” said Hughes. “At Santa Monica we had a little two-minute lapse where they were so good that we made mistakes and next thing you know we’re down ten.
“And we’re not talented enough firepower-wise offensively to overcome those mistakes on defense.
“We’ve had teams in the past where we’d have lapses on defense, but we had such good offensive players that we could still find a way to get it done.
“This year’s team has to play a pretty dang good 40 minutes to beat teams that may have a little more talent than we do,” he said.
Hughes continued with the offensive ineptitude of the team.
“This is the lowest scoring team I’ve had here, by far. The team knows that there will be nights where we’re going to be good offensively and others where we struggle, so we can’t count on that.
“We have to hang our hat on the defensive end and rebounding. We’re getting better, but we’re still not there yet.”
BC has five games left in the regular season and up next for the Renegades are games at West L.A. on Feb. 2 and home against Canyons on Feb. 5.