Larson Anderson took charge as coach for the Grangeville boys’ basketball team this season. Before that, he built the Bulldog girls into perennial state competitors for 21 years. Anderson helped the girls reach the state tournament eight times in the past 10 seasons.

But right off the bat, he knew he had to groom a young boys’ team from the bottom up after a successful 2018-19 season.

“We basically lost the whole team from last year, we lost eight players from that team,” Anderson explained. “I basically started out with a brand new team with three sophomores and a handful of upperclassmen, so we’ve faced some bumps in the road this season.”

The Bulldogs went 18-3 a season ago — but with the lack of returners, they only mustered a 12-11 record.

“We were able to win our play-in games to get back into this spot so despite the woes we faced during the season we were able to win games late to get us to where we are now.”

Still, last year’s team has been motivation for this year’s group, and they will compete for the first time in the State tournament since 2013 when they face North Fremont (19-2) at 7 p.m. Pacific on Thursday in the Idaho Class 2A tournament at Capital High School in Boise.

“They feel like they have something to prove with the team that left last year,” Anderson said. “They feel like its their turn, so all they wanted to do was reach the tournament and they accomplished that. Now its time to knock someone off.”

A young roster usually comes with size problems, and that has been the biggest issue for the Bulldogs this season.

“We’re kind of undersized with our tallest guy being 6-foot-3 — going up against kids that are bigger than us has been the hardest challenge to overcome this year,” Anderson said.

But the team has come together well — the biggest strength for Grangeville is its teamwork and how the players work as a unit.

“We play as a team, it’s not just one guy doing one thing we have a couple of guys that can shoot from the perimeter and under the basket.”

The Bulldogs will be tasked with facing the defending state champion Huskies. As far as preparation goes, Anderson feels like they’ve seen this style of defense before.

“They run a lot of things defensively that St. Maries does, so we’ve seen the half-court trap and the defense they’re going to play against us,” Anderson said. “The key for us on offense is to limit the turnovers and take good shots.

“As for the defensive end, we’ve been playing well and holding teams to 40 points or fewer. So as long as we can play how we’ve been playing all season on defense, I think we should be all right.”