HAMPTON — If the three scrimmages the Virginia Peninsula Community College men’s basketball team played were official, the team would be 1-2, and while that’s not the point of scrimmages, coach Chris Moore came away with more than what the results showed.
“Each of them gave us a different type of test,” Moore said, adding those competitions were
wake-up calls to show the team areas they need to improve.
Moore, who also is the college’s athletics director, has been the men’s basketball coach
since the 2018-19 season.
Last year, the Gators were 6-13 overall and 3-6 in the conference, however, in the 2021-22 season, Moore’s squad went 16-1 and won a conference title. He expects this year’s team to be closer to that championship team than the one from a year ago.
“We’re so talented and so deep that we have a lot of different looks within this unit;
different combinations of guys on the floor and different defensive packages that we can throw at teams,” Moore said. “I think this year is going to be much, much better than last year’s.”
Moore will get his first official look at the team on Wednesday, Nov. 6, with a home game
against Chowan University’s JV at SafeHaven Empowerment Center in Newport News. Tipoff is scheduled for 7 p.m.
Among the key returning players is Aidan Breathwaite, a 6-foot-4 guard from Virginia
Beach who was second-team all-region and first-team all-rookie last year. Keshaun Johnson, a 6-7 forward who sat out last year but played two years ago and was second-team all-conference as a freshman, also is back.
“Having both of them as veterans now is going to be huge,” Moore said.
Daytwan Johnson, a 6-5 guard from Norfolk, leads the list of newcomers.
“Then we just have a whole lot of other pieces that are going to fill in, some really good
freshmen, some guys that are going to make some noise for us this year,” Moore said.
The coach noted athleticism as a strength, along with an intangible often cited in sports.
“One of the things I made sure of with this class is that we recruited guys who knew how
to win,” Moore said. “Guys that came from winning programs.”
That already paid off, Moore said, when the team rallied in the second half of its
scrimmage against Regent to force overtime.
As with many teams, chemistry will play an important role, so Moore also is
concentrating on that aspect of the game.
“When you are at this level, you’re trying to build chemistry. Guys are trying to figure
things out,” he said. “We have a lot of guys that haven’t played together. The biggest thing is just building chemistry over the course of the season.”
The team is practicing and playing home games at a new facility, the SafeHaven
Empowerment Center. Moore said after years of bouncing from gym to gym for practices and games, the Gators have a real home. It, too, will provide one of those intangibles.
“It’s going to enhance the culture. When you are playing at one gym this day, playing at
another gym the next day, you don’t get to build that home culture,” he said. “It’s also going to give us a home-court advantage for the first time.”
Moore predicts his team will put on quite a show and “it will be exciting to watch from start to finish.”
“It’s going to be a momentous year.”
For more information on VPCC, visit vpcc.edu. For more information on VPCC
athletics, visit vpccgators.com.
