Wawasee’s Jacob Hand drives the lane during a game with Plymouth last season. (File photo by Mike Deak)

SYRACUSE — In Wawasee coach Jon Everingham’s first season at the head of the program last year, the Warriors had to learn how to compete. As the 2017-18 season gets underway, the second-year skipper is hoping his team can get over the hump and onto the winning side.

It’s a fine line between the two, and Everingham is himself curious to see if his players can cross it this season.

“We know how to compete, and I think we can compete with anybody on our schedule. A big question mark for us this year is if we can learn how to win,” he said. “Coaches will tell you that it’s a really, really fine line of the difference between having a really competitive team and a winning or championship-style team. We’re somewhere sprinkled in there right now, and it’s going to be a fun season kind of finding out who we are.”

Back from last year’s 6-18 campaign are a cast of six seniors.

Cayden Wegener, Jarius Boyer and Jacob Hand all enter their fourth year of varsity play alongside Trevon Coleman, who averaged 13.3 points per game for the Warriors on the way to an All-NLC selection. Ryan Eddington returns for his third year of varsity play, while Aaron Evans is back for a second season with the Wawasee varsity.

Fellow upperclassmen Zak Linnemeier and Austin Miller add to the mix, giving the Warriors a depth of physical and mental maturity. An experienced lineup has also made the learning curve a little shorter at the front end of the season.

“They know how to do the drills. They know where to be. It’s just a matter of kind of fine-tuning some things this year, where last year it was an introduction of all new stuff,” Everingham said.

Everingham’s roster has him feeling better both about his team’s ability to attack and to defend the basket this season.

The Warriors put up an average of 40.9 points an outing while surrendering 47.3 points per game to opponents last year. They lost three games by a single point in 2016-17, another two by four points and one by three as the team learned how to compete under Everingham. He’s hoping to add some wrinkles to the playbook this season to help his team get on the winning side of those narrow losses, including how to play at different paces during different game situations.

“There are going to be times in the game where we’ll increase the tempo and maybe play a full court-type of game and then there’ll be other times where if we’re really good at it, we can kind of decrease and control the tempo just a little bit,” he explained. “So if we have a lead, we can protect that lead. If we’re tied or behind or we want to increase a lead, we want to have the ability to be a quick-striking team.”

The Warriors’ opener with defending Sectional 21 champion Fairfield on Nov. 21 will be a good measuring stick to see how far the team has come, and Everingham and his staff haven’t looked much beyond it.

“All we’ve talked about is Game 1 and Fairfield, and we’re trying to do our very best to get ready for that particular game,” he said.

“We’ve got a great bunch of guys, and we’re going to have a lot of fun this season. We’re going to just take it one game at a time, as cliche as it may sound.”