ROCHELLE — Tim Thompson and his coaching staff tipped off the first week of team activities for the Rochelle boys basketball program on Monday, and the varsity Hubs are just over two weeks away from their season-opener at Sycamore’s Strombom Holiday Championship.

Rochelle will seek to continue building on back-to-back successful seasons. The Hubs finished 16-11 this past season and 5-3 in the Northern Illinois Big 12 West behind several seniors including All-Conference guard Angel Aguirre, Riley Lodico and state 3-point qualifier Noah Griffith. While the Hubs will have more youth on the court this season, Thompson has confidence that his rising varsity players will learn quickly.

“It could be an interesting year,” Thompson said. “We’ve had two good years in a row but we’re going to be playing a lot of younger guys this year… There are going to be a lot of juniors and a sophomore getting playing time. We’re going to have to make up about 40 points and our players will be learning on the go.”

The Hubs are returning All-Conference and News-Gazette All-State forward Johnny Beck, who averaged about 18 points, eight rebounds and three blocks per game this past season. The 6-foot-8-inch lefty will be flanked by a core of young guards including juniors Landan Martin, Austin Brown, Seth Gould and sophomore Garrett Burdin.

“Johnny’s definitely going to have to take his scoring and rebounding up,” Thompson said. “We’re looking for 20-plus points from him and he’s definitely going to need to be in double-figures in rebounds every game. The one thing that gets lost is that he’s a really good shot-blocker and he doesn’t let players get into his body. He’ll need to bail some of the younger guys out when they’re learning to play defense at the varsity level.”

Thompson said the team’s young guards will need to learn quickly, score points and defend well in their first varsity seasons if the Hubs hope to be successful this year. Players such as Brown, Martin, Gould and Burdin will be stepping up from a sophomore team that won over 20 games as well as the Plano Christmas Classic this past season.

“They’re going to need to learn quickly,” Thompson said. “They’ll have to guard when they haven’t had that much experience. I don’t want to see them get frustrated. They’re going to have high and lows, and we’ll need to adapt as a coaching staff while they learn, but it’s only going to help us in the future.”

The Sycamore Strombom Holiday Championship begins on Monday, Nov. 19 and runs through Nov. 24. The Hubs will tip off their conference schedule when they host Sterling on Friday, Nov. 30 at 7 p.m.