A new face will be patrolling the sidelines for the Marshalltown boys basketball team in its upcoming season.

Michael Appel takes starts his tenure leading the Bobcats when they travel to face Johnston today, moving up from his assistant coaching job last season under Scott Smith.

Appel is a familiar name for the Marshalltown faithful, he was a multi-year starter in the late 2000’s under head coach Ron Ginapp and he played for two years at Marshalltown Community College under head coach Brynjar Brynjarsson, where he was a two-time all-Iowa Community College Athletic Conference honorable mention player.

Now entering his first year at the head of his alma-mater, Appel said he feels right at home.

“This is definitely the place I want to be to try and build something special here,” he said. “This being my first year, it’s just a matter of getting guys to buy in to how we want them to play and playing hard and consistent every day in practice. Trying to set that tone early in the season and build on that.”

While Appel is in his first year at the helm, he is much more familiar with the team because of his assistant coaching during last season’s 8-14 campaign, the best record for the Bobcats since the 2010-11 season.

“I knew stepping in kind of what I had, we have a few new guys stepping in obviously from the sophomore level and a freshman, but I knew all along who I had and I already started brainstorming what we could do and what would work well and going from there,” Appel said. “It wasn’t like I was going into anything new, it was more of a little bit of trial and error with a few different things and different ways of playing that might work.”

Not only does Appel have familiarity with the program and the kids he coaches, he knows what is means to be successful in his hometown and he said the experience playing for and coaching with men like Ginapp, Brynjarsson and Smith has developed him into a man ready for this position.

“It’s a great feeling as a young coach having so many people you can go and talk to that kind of have their own, different styles and perspectives on things,” Appel said. “You can kind of pick different things from each person, and they all bring such great attributes to what it’s all about to be a good coach and a good leader. Just having those guys around to talk to basically on a daily basis, it’s awesome for me.”

Appel said the philosophy he brings to the sidelines has as much to do with the product on the court as it does the kids’ attitudes and actions away from the game.

“We kind of have three rules if you ever want to be on the floor,” he said. “The first one is you have to play hard, you have to bring it every time you’re on the floor. Our philosophy at Marshalltown is we are going to play harder than you, and that’s what we have to try and do and that’s something you have to instill in practice. The second thing is you have to be unselfish, you have to be a good teammate, you have to understand that there’s always going to be a better pass and a better play.

“The third thing is you have to be respectful. When you walk into the school, when you walk onto the court, we are always being respectful of the officials and who we are playing against, and that’s those three things we try to emphasize to step onto the court.”

When it comes to the plan on the court, Appel takes over a team that has a large hole missing from last year’s stat line, which so happens to share a last name with the new coach.

Graduated senior Luke Appel, Michael’s younger brother, was a star for MHS in the 2017-18 season. He finished the year averaging 22 points per game and 10.1 rebounds per game, and he took more shots than the next two players on the team combined.

Michael said replacing a player like Luke, who was an Iowa Print Sports Writers Association second-team All-State player a year ago, isn’t going to be an easy task.

“It doesn’t just happen by throwing another guy in there, it’s going to take a team effort to replace him,” Michael said of his brother, who now plays at Kirkwood Community College. “The guys know that everything we do is going to be a team effort, trying to make up those 22 points he scored a game is going to take two or three more guys to do it. We’re not going to have a specific guy to be dominant, it’s going to take all five, six, seven, how many ever guys we play that night to get the job done, and I think for the most part we have some really unselfish guys who are OK with that.”

Where the younger Appel leaves a hole in the post-player production, the Bobcats actually bring back quite a bit of their 3-point shooting.

Junior Austin Shomo led the team in 3-point makes in his sophomore season with 33, and he shot 42.8 percent from behind the arc. Incoming senior Jacob Smith was just behind Shomo with 28 makes, and he did so at a 47.5 percent clip.

Senior Bennett O’Hare is used to running the offense after playing point guard last year, and he was second on the team in assists and led in steals.

Michael said the attack is going to look different this year, but that doesn’t mean it will slow down at all.

“We are not going to have a guy we can throw it into almost every time down the floor, it’s going to be a lot of using our quickness, push it at times up the floor, try to beat our guys down the floor and attack the rim and kind of work that inside-out from attacking off the dribble to kicking it to guys open on the wings,” he said. “We are basically playing four quick guards and a post a lot of the times, so we have to use that to our advantage with what we are doing offensively and even defensively at times with pressuring teams full court. Using our quickness to our advantage is what we are trying to do, and our good shooting.”

As for who will fill in that post position, Appel said Sunday Arou will step into the role for his senior year, and his ability to play facing the basket will allow the team to spread the floor a little more.

Freshman Armonniey Thomas has also generated quite a buzz around the team, and Appel said he will likely see significant minutes.

While that takes care of the starting five, Appel said it will still be a challenge replacing other leaders from last season like Josh Melde, who was second on the team in scoring, and Sam Irwin.

“We are always looking for those guys, a kid like Will Van Buren has really impressed me with how hard he’s been playing,” Appel said. “He’s a guy that understands his role, he’s going to play hard and try to get rebounds and defend and all those little things you need to win games. Another guy that has really impressed me in that aspect is Dru Dobbins. He’s got a bit of a learning curve after taking a year off but he’s starting to get it and starting to play hard.”

Developing more than you starting lineup is key, Appel said, because breeding success throughout the entire program starts with much more than just the five players on the court.

“If your second team isn’t good and isn’t playing hard, it’s not going to make you any better,” he said. “You’ve got to have solid guys from top to bottom to be competitive in practice, because if you don’t have that you’re not going to get better. These guys have been doing a great job of pushing our other guys and knowing, ‘if I keep playing hard, I will have a shot to get on the court.'”

When Marshalltown hits the hardwood tonight for its game against Johnston, starting at 7:45 p.m. on the road, Appel said he doesn’t want his guys concerned with the fact the Dragons were 20-4 last year and made it to the state quarterfinals, he wants them worried about how they can improve their own game.

“Our mindset every week is, ‘OK, we want to go 2-0.’ We are focusing on one game at a time, we are focusing on every day getting better and building off of that every single day,” he said. “If they can play hard and buy into what we are trying to do, there’s no reason we can’t be in every game and give ourselves a chance to win. Ultimately it comes down to first playing harder than the other team and seeing where it falls from there.”