Last season, Pleasant Hill finished the season with 14-10 overall record, 7-3 Mountain Valley league record, #18 OSAA ranking. Phill was a few possessions away from making it to the Sweet 16. This year, Mountain Valley made some changes with the addition of Santiam Christian along with Creswell, Harrisburg, La Pine. “I am not a huge fan of playing each team 3 times and only having 5 teams in the league, but I do like the level of competition. Santiam Christian brings a tremendous challenge to our league, but it will help with RPI rankings.” says Head Coach Matt Thornton.
Phill graduated only 3 seniors but return a lot of depth that will allow them to compete for a league title. We return 3 all league players, Stephen Parmenter, Logan Pruitt, and Max Smith. With Stephen and Logan being Seniors, I have seen a tremendous amount of leadership from them and they push our team to become better. They are both athletic players and have improved a lot from last year. Max Smith is a skilled Sophomore who mainly played post for us last year, but is working on becoming a more complete player.”
I asked coach to define his team with one word. “Athletic. The 8 guys that are in line for minutes are all good athletes. I feel like at times we will be able to create mismatches since each position player is able to score and put the ball on the floor.”
Pleasant Hill team goal, “Get to Coos Bay. We have an enormous amount of work ahead of us but I like what I have seen this week. The players are bought in and are competing each and every practice.
Parmenter and Pruitt have grown a ton in a year and are two of the top players in 3A.