The Morristown High School boys basketball program sent two players on to college basketball rosters and officially closed the door on all connections to the 2018 state championship team.

Head coach Scott McClelland left to take over the Noblesville program. Kevin Crim graduated and is part of Hanover College’s men’s basketball team. Drake Moore graduated and headed west to Nebraska to play for York College.

If that was not enough to overcome in a rebuilding season, the program then received news that rising senior Quinton Batton would miss his final season while battling leukemia.

The athletic department needed a steady hand to take the reins at Morristown and turned to veteran coach Collin McCartt, who was an assistant coach at Morristown the last two seasons.

“Obviously I know the kids and (coach) McClelland and I have pretty similar philosophies,” said McCartt.

McCartt is 123-169 over 13 seasons as a head coach at North Putnam, Morgan Township and Prairie Heights and has two sectional titles to his credit.

Graduation took Moore (18.5 ppg), Crim (17.8 ppg) and Sawyer Jones (11.1 ppg) while Batton averaged 6 ppg meaning 91% of Morristown’s offense from a team that finished 20-5 is gone.

“I don’t have a lot of minutes coming back but there are a couple of experienced guys,” said McCartt. “Not having ‘Q’ this year made us change some things.”

Supporting a teammate through a health emergency is providing bigger life lessons for the program than wins and losses.

“More than anything, it’s given guys different perspectives on a lot of things,” said McCartt. “Now they want to play for him and want to play for themselves.”

The players and coaches are in constant contact with Batton, according to McCartt, who will follow them remotely this season through radio and online broadcasts.

Morristown opens the regular season at home Wednesday against Triton Central in a girls-boys varsity-only doubleheader.

With Batton sidelined, that leaves Morristown with senior Nick Stidham to lead the way. The six-foot, three-inch forward averaged 3.7 ppg and 5.3 rpg last season.

Juniors Chase Theobald and Nolan Laster will have expanded roles this season.

“I believe Nick and Nolan will step in there and help us scoring,” said McCartt.

With Theobald, the trio will be in charge of developing the on-court product one game at a time.

“Those are the three that have experience in the big games,” said McCartt. “They are mentoring the young guys.”

Early in the season, McCartt will look at sophomores Cade Mahin, Carson Conrad and Matthew Carlton to provide productive minutes.

The Morristown varsity roster also includes junior Shane Riley, sophomore Noah Garthwaite and freshman Colin Kieninger.

The Yellow Jackets’ first road trip of the season is Saturday at Southwestern followed by three straight home games against Hauser, Oldenburg Academy and Union County.

“I want to see how we compete,” said McCartt when asked what he wanted to see from his program at the start of the season. “We need to control the things we can control and how we do the things that don’t take talent, like rebound and talk.”

Morristown is hosting a holiday tournament Dec. 29-30 with New Washington, Clinton Prairie, Lawrenceburg, South Ripley, South Dearborn, Covenant Christian and Randolph Southern coming to the Bee Hive.

The semifinal round of the Shelby County Tournament at Waldron High School is Jan. 7.

The Yellow Jackets’ final home game of the regular season is Feb. 11 against Eastern Hancock.

The regular season schedule concludes with road games at Batesville on Feb. 18 and Tri on Feb. 25.

McCartt ended his last head coaching job at North Putnam in 2019 to move closer to home. Now a special education teacher at Morristown, the veteran coach is ready to get back to calling the shots.

“It was a good time in my life to step back,” said McCartt, who has obtained his administrator’s license while teaching at Morristown. “I got a different experience. Coaching with ‘Mac’ was a great experience. I learned a lot. This was a good opportunity at a great place.

“I was not searching for somewhere (to coach) outside of Morristown. The tradition ‘Mac’ built here … this is a great place to coach basketball.”