BENTONVILLE — When he first met Bentonville’s boys basketball players, first-year coach Jason McMahan already could tell reality didn’t meet his expectations.

McMahan, the former Siloam Springs coach who replaced Mike Nelson, expected to detect low self-esteem. He anticipated a void of confi dence and leadership.

And while he wasn’t completelywrong, McMahan has learned in the past few months that changing the basketball culture at Bentonville might not be as drastic a task as he initially thought.

“That’s the No. 1 thing I’ve been shocked by is the enthusiasm and the chemistry, and how much they’ve bought into everything,” said McMahan, whose Siloam team won a Class 5A state championship in 2008. “I want to win so bad for our kids because they care so much.

“They’ve done everything I’veasked so far. They’ve totally sold out to what we’re trying to do.”

McMahan realizes that positive attitude alone won’t immediately translate to victories, especially for a program that has won four games in 7A-West Conference play the last two seasons. But he’s undoubtedly encouraged by the preseason work habits his Tigers have shown.

Bentonville doesn’t return any full-time starters from last year’s 8-19 squad, but McMahan said hedidn’t think the lack of experience would hurt the Tigers. In fact, McMahan said he looked forward to a clean slate of sorts.

The Tigers have noticed di◊erences in everything they do with McMahan as their coach. And they’ve embraced the changes.

“Practices are a lot more up and down,” senior point guard Grant Higgins said. “Everything’s uptempo. The coaches are alwaysencouraging us. It makes practice go really fast. There’s also a lot of competition with all of our drills at practice.”

McMahan said Higgins has done a remarkable job as Bentonville’s team leader thus far. Higgins, a 5-foot-10senior point guard, earned the most playing time last season of any Tigers player to return this season.

Higgins couldn’t give any concrete reasons as to why the Tigers immediately displayed confidence and positivity as soon as McMahan arrived in Bentonville.He just said the Tigers wanted to begin this season anew, trying to forget the past as much as possible.

That won’t be easy, considering McMahan’s terminology and style has often confused them. McMahan has noticed the Tigers getting more confident as they become more comfortable.

“When we first started, when something went wrong, they had bad body language,” McMahan said. “Then, we got to the point that three things had to go wrong to get that bad body language. Now it takes a lot of things to getto that point.

“That’s changing culture and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Higgins said he’s hoping Bentonville can make up for its possible lack of height and bulk with the outlook McMahan has complimented.

“I think we have a lot competitiveness on the team,” Higgins said. “Our team is going to have heart and toughness. Everyone just wants to win so bad. We don’t want to just finish higher in conference. We want to win a lot more games.

“We don’t want to be a team everyone looks past.”

Sports, Pages 12 on 11/02/2009

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