When March rolls around, the Parkland High School boys basketball team will look to repeat the success it experienced last season. The Trojans won both the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and the District 11 6A titles and are looking to bring home back-to-back championships for the first time since 2014-15 and 2015-16. They finished last year with a 21-8 overall record.

Head coach Andy Stephens and his staff had a talented group of seniors graduate from that team, including Will Meeker, Kharan Joshi, Matt Rantz, Matt Bauer, Jesse Ruisch and Dahlir Adams. Four of those players started most games, so the Trojans will need to bring on more inexperienced players into starting roles this winter.

Parkland will bring back some experienced and talented players, including EPC MVP Nick Coval, a junior. Senior Matt Ray is also a Swiss Army knife-type player who does anything asked of him, while contributing on both offense and defense.

Other players that Stephens will look to this season include Blake Bednar, Joey Gerbasio, Zaire Smaltz, Owen Rodgers, Josh Pulver, Luke Spang, Connor Johns, Robbie Ruisch, Eddie Paz Romero, Michael Toth, Cole Hovan, Gio Escalona and Jayden Thomas.

Even with a ton of less-experienced players when it comes to varsity minutes, Stephens still expects to have a talented and hardworking team that works together for the common goal of winning championships.

“I think we have a lot of team chemistry and communication,” said Stephens. “The guys have a strong work ethic and really want to improve their games. They may not have a lot of time at the varsity level, but their confidence is so high and it’s nice to see as a coach. We just need to keep getting better in practice each and every day to get to where we want to be.”

Goals and expectations are high once again for Parkland even with an almost brand-new team.

“We are optimistic for the season,” Stephens said. “It is going to be a tough league again this season with tough competition. We’re also playing a very difficult nonconference schedule. We need to come to play every night and not have any let offs.”

The Trojans begin their regular season with one of those tough nonconference games as they host Lower Merion on Friday. Parkland opens conference play against Northampton next Tuesday, also at home.