Get ready for a new-look Hoopa Warriors team this winter.

Longtime head coach Inker McCovey is back on the sideline and it was a successful return to action for the boys team coach on Friday night as he guided them to a 69-62 win over Del Norte at Hoopa.

The Hoopa and Del Norte girls also played at Hoopa on Friday, with the visiting Warriors taking a 38-36 victory on a buzzer beater.

Junior Malakai McCoy led the Hoopa boys in scoring with 30 points, while teammate Brian Richards added 16 points.

“We played really good,” McCovey said. “We’ve still got a lot of things we need to improve. That’s my job as a coach, but we’re going to be dangerous.”

The returning coach, who was in charge of the program during the Warriors’ heyday of the early 2000s, has been working with his players for the past two and a half weeks and says he is more than happy with how they have responded.

“They’re buying into the program,” he said. “I work them hard, I’m old school and really disciplined, and the kids are buying in.”

Under McCovey, the Warriors will play fast-paced offense and hard-nosed defense.

“They’re scrappy,” McCovey said of his players after Friday’s win. “It was fun to watch.”

Junior Damian Escalera led Del Norte in scoring with 23 points, while Sawyer Fry added 16 points.

With the loss, the Del Norte boys dropped to 0-1.

The Del Norte girls, meanwhile, won their matchup in thrilling fashion with a buzzer beater securing a two-point win.

No scoring details were immediately available for Del Norte.

This year’s Hoopa girls team is very young with five freshmen on a roster of nine, two of whom — Vuunship E-Kor and Jessie Moon — played both the JV and varsity games on Friday.

But longtime head coach Floyd “Cowboy” Billings likes a lot of what he’s seeing from the team early in the season, especially on defense.

“We played awesome D,” said Billings, whose team led the Big 5 school by eight at halftime. “We came out and surprised them. The freshmen, they played excellent defense.”

With just three returning players on team, the young Warriors don’t have a lot of experience, but they have enough athleticism to cause their opponents problems.

“We’re quicker than we were in the past. We’re really quick,” Billings said. “But we’re undersized.

“They got us in rebounds, but all in all we played very good defense for how young we are.”

Wau’Kel Blake led the home team in scoring with 16 points, while, Moon added nine points.

Blake, a senior, is one the three returning players, along with juniors Marley Tracy and Chloe King.

The rest of the roster is underclassmen, including lone sophomore Carmen Pratt.

King had a good game in the paint, along with freshman Alyse Kelley, while Tracy had a “really good game defensively,” according to the coach, and also hit two clutch late free throws to tie the game, before Del Norte’s game-clinching buzzer beater.

The coach was also impressed with the efforts of the busy E-Kor and Moon, who helped lead the Hoopa girls JV team to victory before playing the varsity game.

“Those two girls, they played their hearts out,” Billings said.

Freshmen Honey Colegrove-Inong and Shiah Murphy round out the young Hoopa roster.

Both Hoopa teams will be back in action against Trinity on Monday night, with the girls hosting and the boys playing on the road.