Park City’s boys basketball team will play four games in four days this week in a tournament at Olympus High School starting on Tuesday.
Park City was set to play Mountain Ridge on Tuesday, Layton Christian Academy on Wednesday, Hillcrest on Thursday and Tooele on Friday. The Miners are looking to reverse their fortunes as they enter the four-game stretch on a three-game losing skid.
“We have some very challenging games at the Olympus tournament, which is why we play in the tournament,” Park City coach Thomas Purcell said. “Games against very good programs, and that’s kind of been the theme of the season. When we’ve played well, we’ve won, and when we’ve played poorly, we’ve lost.”
Between those four schools, Park City will have plenty of work on its hands.
“Mountain Ridge has a very good coach and a very strong program, and they had a very good team last year,” Purcell said. “I would expect that we’ll have a stiff challenge from Mountain Ridge. Layton Christian we’ve played in the offseason. We know what we’re getting into there, they’re a very strong team. Hillcrest, I used to work for the coach there when he was at Juan Diego, so I know them well. We’ve played them over the summer. Tooele, we don’t know much about yet.”
Park City won three of its first four games of the season, but the Miners are now 3-4 after losses to Cottonwood, Wasatch and Green Canyon. But this week presents an opportunity to regain some momentum and try to get back into the win column.
“As a coach, the biggest thing that I want to do is to continue to get better every day and not necessarily bounce back or rise to the occasion,” Purcell said. “‘Are we getting better?’ is kind of my biggest question that I ask myself. And I think we have to answer that question this week. I think we have to get better all week long, even if it’s tough and even if we’re playing heavy minutes.”
Purcell laid down his expectations of what “playing better” looks like for the Miners this week.
“It looks like us taking care of the ball, it looks like us taking accountability defensively – both for our individual responsibilities as well as the team responsibilities – and to be honest, we need to play harder than the other team every time we play,” Purcell said. “Our teams have played really hard in the past, and this team played really hard at the beginning of the year. And we’ve got to get back to that.”
Purcell feels his team can hang with anyone this year at its best. The Miners will have plenty of opportunities to prove that they can this week, but it will take Park City’s best basketball to do that.
“We struggle, we don’t have a big margin for error,” Purcell said. “And then if you take a couple guys out of the game, we really don’t have a margin for error at all. And so, we just need to recognize that, and as coaches, we need to hold them accountable and to the standards that we need in order to reach our goals.”
Tuesday’s game was the first since a 64-37 loss to Green Canyon on Dec. 21. The holiday break came at a good time for the Miners, as it gave them some time to regroup and reevaluate ahead of the start of region play once the calendar flips to 2023. That includes the coaches, too.
“I’m terrified of losing, but you’ll learn a lot more when you lose,” Purcell said. “I don’t think I would have taken the break to reexamine myself, my coaching style and how I was handling this team if we don’t have a little slip-up in the quality of our play. So, I think, for myself and for the team, (it) might have been good timing. And now, we’re going to play some heavy minutes, so it might be time to toughen up a little bit and get ready to go for region.”