First-year Malden Green Wave boys basketball coach Mike Kilgore wants his players to display enthusiasm when they step onto the court this season.

“I want our guys to be excited and be happy to be on the floor,” Kilgore said. “I want them to represent their school more than anything. If they work hard for their school I think we will be alright.”

Malden, which went 15-4 at the junior varsity level and 4-17 at the varsity level last season, has six seniors, three juniors, eight sophomores, and seven freshmen out for high school basketball.

“We are young but we have a lot of players coming back that played varsity last season as freshmen and sophomores,” Kilgore said. “We should be able to go 10 to 12 deep on a good night. But we are not going to get into any names. The way we are going to do things is not worrying about names and just focus on the style of play.”

Kilgore said the style of play his squad implements could fluctuate.

“I would love for us to get up and down and play full court on offense and defense,” he said. “But we will adapt as needed based on our personnel and do what is best for our team to be successful each night.”

Kilgore said one forte of his squad is his tallest players have the versatility to play on the perimeter as well as in the paint.

“We have some guys with the versatility to play inside and outside,” he said. “But we are going to try to pull some of our bigger guys out on the perimeter. We also want to do a lot of slashing to the basket."

Kilgore believes enjoying success on the perimeter on offense and defense will be crucial if Malden hopes to make noise in the Bootheel Conference.

“The conference has changed since the last time I coached in it when I was at South Pemiscot a few years ago,” he said. “There were a lot of big, post players in it at the time. But now it seems like everything is more up-and-down, perimeter-oriented. I feel like we need to be ready to match up with some of the best guards in the area in the conference.”

Malden opens its season Tuesday when it visits Doniphan.

“Doniphan will be a tough matchup for us,” Kilgore said. “But it should be a good test. My biggest thing going into this season is to get these guys excited about playing for Malden again. That’s my goal.”