"We had five starters that scored 15 or more points in a game and we really didn't have any let-off when we went to our bench," he said. "We played with a lot of confidence and had a lot of different weapons offensively."
Blue Valley returned three starters from a successful season last year, and Burkdoll was confident the players who were important off the bench last season could step in to fill the starting roles. Once again, the bench became an important factor.
The depth became all too important early in the season when Ryan Lund, the Rams' center, went out with an injury, leaving the team to adjust without his size. Blue Valley lost Lund for three games, but late in the season the Rams lost two key bench players in back-to-back games.
Burkdoll said he was always looking for a new player to carry the load.
"I think it was a big adjustment from size and the confidence of our team, we looked at (Lund) as a leader to us and we had to go to a zone for those few games," Burkdoll said. "It was just a matter of different guys stepping up for us and it was just different guys stepping up for us every game."
While the Class 1A state tournament was on the Rams' radar, they faced the challenge of stopping a tough Centralia team from making it's sixth straight trip. In the substate championship game, the Rams played Centralia even from the start, but a shaky second quarter left them behind. Burkdoll said he couldn't have asked his team for anything else in the 57-40 loss.
"We knew it was going to be tough and we hadn't been in a close game for almost a month before that," Burkdoll said. "We did exactly what I thought we needed to do down the stretch and we just missed out on a couple of opportunities and we lost to a hot team, a team that has made state six years in a row."
One player Burkdoll looked to often was his senior point guard, Blake Fronce, The Mercury's Flint Hills Boys' Player of the Year, who scored 13.8 points and had 4.8 assists per game for the Rams.
"I think Blake gets as much out of his size as anybody I've been around," Burkdoll said. "He's not the tallest guy or the, quickest guy but he is definitely one of the best basketball players I have coached. He can knock any shot down, he plays smart defense and there's not many kids that I have seen that work as hard as him."
Fronce's importance to the school and its basketball history was locked into place when he set a record for most wins in a playing career with 73, having played varsity all four years.
"I couldn't have asked for a better point guard, he knows my stuff just as well as I do," Burkdoll said. "He hit big shots, in a lot of games for over the past few years."
Next season will be yet another year of looking for the key bench players to transition into role playing starters as the Rams will lose four starters.
