File photo – Luke Lemke in action for the Tigers last season.

By Ray Hamill — The Arcata Tigers are facing a whole new challenge this year.

With four straight league titles to their credit — and just three loses in league play during that run — as well as five straight Dick Niclai tournament championship game appearances, the Tigers have been setting the standard in H-DNL boys basketball for the past several years.

This winter, however, head coach Kellen Maynard has a very new-look roster and there are going to be some growing pains as they adjust.

2023/24 Big 5 MVP Luke Lemke is back to lead the way, along with fellow senior Jack Luh, who also played an integral role on last year’s championship team.

Aside from them, however, Maynard has no players with any meaningful varsity experience on a roster of 13.

“We’re just severely inexperienced,” Maynard said. “And we have seven guys that have never played a varsity minute before this season.”

An early-season injury to Luh hasn’t helped matters either, and Maynard said he’s not sure when the influential forward will return.

Still, despite the obstacles, the Arcata players are showing some signs of progress as they build towards league play, and Maynard is hoping that a tough pre-league schedule will pay dividends down the road.

The Tigers opened the new season with back-to-back loses at Archie Williams (74-46) and at Rancho Cotate (69-47) two weeks ago, playing a pair of schools that Maynard described as “very, very good squads” and two teams that feature a lot of experience this year.

They followed that with a pair of road wins this past weekend, beating South Fork (79-45) and Kelseyville (80-40).

“We still struggled, but we were a little more aggressive and we didn’t look quite so star struck playing at the varsity level,” the Arcata coach said of the weekend games. “We’re just a work in progress. We have a lot of work to do, and hopefully we can learn from it and get better.”

The upcoming pre-league schedule won’t be easy, with a challenging trip to the Harlan Carter tournament in Redding this week, as well as upcoming trips to the Red Bluff tournament in two weeks — “we’re in the murders’ row side of the bracket,” Maynard said — and a trip to the always challenging Marin Catholic tournament later in the month.

Next week’s annual Arcata tournament also will feature a quality field, including Montgomery and South Medford.

“My goal was to overload the early-season schedule so we could get them some good experience,” Maynard said.

The biggest challenge for Maynard and his players is to get better on the defensive side of the ball before league play begins in the new year, an aspect of the game they have struggled with early in the new season.

“We’re just trying to get better defensively,” the coach added. “We’re trying to learn how to play at this level.

“Our practices have to get a lot more consistent, and we have to focus on the defensive end more … we have enough team speed and enough aggressiveness, but if you can’t stop anybody on the half court, it’s really difficult to get in a rhythm.”

The coach, however, is hopeful his team will be peaking by the time league play rolls around, and he is expecting a battle in the Big 5, as always.

“I think it’s going to be extremely tough once we get to January,” Maynard said. “Anybody can win on any given night.”

Lemke has hit the ground running, as expected, and is averaging a team-high 17.8 points a game, while teammates Elias Gomez and Heron Cromwell have also impressed early.

Gomez is averaging 7.5 points a game and Cromwell 6.8 points.

Remey Winkler is second on the team in scoring with 8.5 points a game.

The Tigers open the Harlan Carter tournament against University Prep on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

Jack Luh in action for the Tigers last season.