Last week Ragland finalized its boys’ basketball squad and today it has its first official tipoff against Ohatchee before taking on Victory Christian tomorrow

“We’re gonna hit it pretty hard pretty quickly,” head coach Andy Eden said. He said that after losing a good number of seniors, he is hoping that his teams’ skill will continue to build after successes some have seen from playing on the Purple Devil roster for a few years.

“They’re difficult to replace,” Eden said of the former seniors. “But, we’ve got a good group of seniors and returners this year.”

Eden summed up the competition ahead on the Purple Devils schedule for 2008-2009. “We’re in an area this year that we should be competitive in, but it’s not going to be easy.”

He said that with Victory, Coosa and Jacksonville Christian as well as Sacred Heart, that he knows his team will have to work hard to succeed this year. “It won’t be easy, but we should be competitive.”

He continued, “We’re just hoping that if we work hard that we’ll be successful. [The players know] that none of them are going to be good individually unless we’re all there as a team and put forth team effort and we welcome the challenge and look forward to a good season.”