Coach Tom Gutshall is back for his 30th year as Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Tucker County High School. This year the veteran coach will look to replace 4 of 5 starters and 6 seniors from last year’s team that fell to eventual State Champion Tug Valley in the State Semi-Finals. Coach Gutshall is looking for someone to step in and play some key minutes and play some key roles to fill the vacancies that were left by that great senior class from last year. The team was scheduled to scrimmage Preston Monday Dec 2nd and then they will travel to Keyser on Thursday Dec 5th for a scrimmage contest at 6pm.
The Mt. Lions schedule is tough again this year with a number of tests throughout the season to get them ready for the playoffs in March. Home and away games against Notre Dame, Moorefield, Trinity, Southern Garrett, Petersburg, Tygarts Valley, East Hardy, Pendleton Co and Pocahontas Co will test the Mt. Lions. Add in games against Philip-Barbour and road contest at Charleston Catholic, Buffalo and “AAA” Elkins will give the Tucker County team one of the toughest schedules in Class “A”.
One of last year’s leading scorers Senior Ian Nichols returns along with Seniors: Austin Zirk, Mitchell Mason, and Zach Armstrong. Others that will contribute this year will be Juniors: Owen Evans, Derek Zirk, Chase Alkire, Andrew Hauser and Landon Dillard, Sophomores: Tyler Birchland, Seth Evans and Marcus Mason.
The last 12 years the Tucker County community has made the trip to Charleston to see the Mt. Lions play at the Civic Center in the State Tournament. Since Coach Tom Gutshall took over the program back in the 1983-84 season he has made 19 trips to Charleston with 2 State Runner-Up finishes in 1998 and 2004. This year the Mt. Lions will try to extend the consecutive State Tournament appearances streak to 13. When asked about the tradition of success at TCHS Coach Gutshall said, “There is a high expectation and the tradition started back in the 80’s even before I coached here, we have always had tough kids at Tucker County and we played a tough “AA” schedule and competed in every game.” Gutshall also added, “We have been really lucky we have had some excellent basketball players at Tucker County through the years.”
The Mt. Lions first game of the season will be at Trinity on Dec 11th. The JV game will tip off at 5:45pm and varsity will follow it. For more Tucker County Sports Info and Live Broadcast go to
TuckerCountySports.Com.