Northampton first-year head coach Matt Scholl easily knows one major task for this team this upcoming season.

It circles around the fact that his team lost 94-percent of its offense from last season. However, Scholl is confident his team defense – ranked fifth in the East Penn Conference (EPC) last year allowing 48.7 points per game – can make the adaptation easier.

“We have to find points,” deadpanned Scholl. “If we want to hold teams in the 40s and 50s, we have to be able to score that many points.

“We don’t have a lot of experience, and we don’t have enough guys who played a significant amount of minutes.”

The Konkrete Kids lost their top-six players from last year’s 21-8 squad that advanced to the PIAA state playoffs, where they dropped a tight, 39-37 decision to Fox Chapel in the finals. Head coach Coy Stampone stepped down after 10 seasons, and Scholl - his lead assistant for the previous seven seasons - has anticipated a slow transition.

“We played well during the summer league and we had a record around .500 in the Cedar Beach league,” he said. “We had two games in a fall tournament at DeSales, one was good and one was bad.

“We know it will take some time.”

Junior Tristen Pinnock, the leading returning scorer at 2.5 points per game and senior Tyler Kauffman are the lone returnees who played significant minutes.

Pinnock, and fellow juniors J.J. Kolumber and Brody Graff should all see time at the point. Yet, all three should be in the starting lineup.

Senior forwards Sam Koplin and Parker Christman likely will round out the starting five.

Scholl will be looking to round out his bench, and he hopes to have a large one. He will employ their standard match-up zone, which has been a staple for the Kids over the past 10 years, and has been used throughout their system.

“I think we can say who are our top seven players are,” he said. “There isn’t a huge difference between our number eight to number 20 player at this point.

“Ideally, we would like to get to eight or nine players in our rotation. It is going to be a team effort. We know we have to be patient, and we won’t be able to run everything like we have in the past. But our core group put in a tremendous amount of work in the offseason to prepare for this opportunity.”

The Kids will have their usual competitive EPC schedule and have added Colonial League opponents Northwestern, Bangor, and Palmerton. Getting to districts is a primary goal. They will play in the Pine Grove Christmas tournament instead of the Salisbury tournament, which they won the previous five years and was a jump starter for the second half of their season.

“We want to get to 11 wins,” said Scholl. “Our schedule will be tougher than it has been in recent years. We played well after the Salisbury tournament in the past, and we should be a better team in the second half of the season.

“We have been competitive in practice, and every player will earn his playing time in practice. We need to develop our identity, which will revolve around our matchup zone.”