Wranglers tap into their past

By Kevin Cloe, Publisher

Coach ‘Chuey’ Gonzales

It was a brief flashback to yesteryear.

On one end of the practice court, Jesus “Chuey” Gonzales was working with the guards; on the other end, Tony Qorri was working with the big front-court guys.

They were two of the starting five of Wickenburg High School’s historic 2000-01 basketball team that went undefeated in region play, reached the 3A state semifinals and finished with a 27-6 record.

This day, however, Gonzales was preparing “his” Wranglers for their 2008-09 season opener against Santa Cruz. Qorri, the 2000-01 region Most Valuable Player and all-state first-team selection now living and working in New York, was “home” for the Thanksgiving holiday and offered to help his former teammate with practice drills.

Gonzales, who was the starting point guard on that famous 2000-01 Wrangler squad, is this year’s head basketball coach for the Wranglers. He succeeds Norris Vaughan as the head coach but didn’t know about his new appointment until midway through the fall season. Actually, he was the runner-up for the job after the summer interview process, but the first selection (a new teacher on campus) left the school in the first quarter. So Gonzales, owner of the Premier Maintenance and Landscape business in Wickenburg, was called … and immediately accepted the offer to coach the Wranglers this year.

After graduating from Wickenburg High in 2001, Gonzales attended college at Glendale Community College before transferring to Southwest Baptist College, where he played basketball and earned his business degree.

“Chuey” returned to Wickenburg in 2005, got married and then started his landscape business in 2006 while staying in touch with the local basketball programs by helping with the Phoenix Suns youth camp and assisting Vaughan in 2007-08.

Now he is in charge.

And what kind of team is he inheriting? In 2007-08, the Wranglers struggled through a 14-10 season and then graduated three of the starting five players. Only one of the remaining two, 6-foot-4 Alec Offner, has returned to the team. Dallas Mills, 6-foot-3 quarterback from the Wranglers’ football team, has decided not to play basketball this season in order to spend more time refining his pitching form for the baseball season.

Offner was the team’s third-leading scorer last year with almost a 14-point average.

This year’s roster shows a lot of size, but most of the larger players will start the season on the bench due mostly to their late arrival on the squad after wrapping up football.

If size was the prerequisite for starting, here is what Wickenburg’s starting lineup would look like: Alex Napoles (6-8, 330), Lee Guenther (6-6, 240), Offner (6-4, 175), Tanner Reznicek (6-2, 175) and Aaron Stone (6-1, 165).

Offner and Reznicek, up from junior varsity squad who saw a little bit of varsity action last year, are expected to be early-season starters along with guards Justin Bergman, Tim Root and Christian Garduno. Bergman was starting point guard Drew Vaughan’s back-up on the varsity last year, and Garduno experienced some limited varsity play in 2007-08.

“We’re rebuilding this year, and it’ll be a slow process,” Coach Gonzales explained, “but we’ll eventually be OK.”

The Wranglers opened their season Monday night (Dec. 1) with a 59-54 loss to visiting Santa Cruz in a game that wasn’t actually decided until the final seconds.

Offner and Reznicek led the Wrangler scoring with 20 and 18 points, respectively.

Coach Gonzales’ squad experienced a see-saw battle with the visiting Dust Devils all night long - leading by five at the end of the first period; trailing at halftime by three points, 27-24; and holding another five-point advantage, 41-36, after three periods.

The Wranglers never did recover from a scoring discrepancy that halted the game for an extended period of time with a little more than five minutes to play and the score knotted at 45.

The outcome of the discrepancy gave Santa Cruz a one-point lead, 46-45, and then the Wranglers were down by five, 52-47, two minutes later. The visiting Dust Devils maintained their lead with a scrambling pressure defense before sinking the final field goal of the night in the final seconds.

The Wranglers traveled to Maricopa Tuesday night (Dec. 2) and will hit the road to Parker next Monday (Dec. 8) to kick their new season into high gear.

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