Vince Dowd takes the helm of Wheat Ridge boys basketball

WHEAT RIDGE — Tommy and Vince Dowd will both be guiding Wheat Ridge’s boys basketball team, but the younger Dowd is in the forefront this season.

Tommy Dowd, who retired from teaching at Wheat Ridge High School before the start of the school year, has been the head boys basketball coach for the Farmers for more than two decades. His son Vince played for Tommy and has been an assistant coach for several years.

But now, the time has come where Vince will be the one running the show with his father as a mentor on the Farmers’ bench.

“It is always weird,” Vince said standing up on the bench with his father in an assistant coach role. “It’s big shoes to fill. I’m just glad he is still here and doing it with me. Sharing this with him is the most fun for me.”

Vince admitted he might bump into his father a few times on the bench this year when Tommy stands up from the bench.

“I had to tell him to sit down a couple of times,” Vince said with a laugh. “I think the refs were pretty relieved when they saw it was me and not him tonight.”

Wednesday night was the season and home opener for the Farmers. Mullen, coming off a tough overtime loss to Legacy on Monday, was able to take a 66-51 victory against Wheat Ridge.

The Mustangs (Class 6A team out of the Centennial League) held a 26-point lead late in the third quarter, but Wheat Ridge mustered a solid run cutting the lead to a little as 10 points in the fourth quarter.

“Kind of,” Mullen junior Jordan Leslie said when asked if he was having flashbacks to the Mustangs losing a fourth-quarter lead to Legacy. “This time we knew we had to stay solid and stick together.”

Leslie simple took over the game in the fourth quarter. The junior scored a dozen points in the final 4 minutes to finish with a game-high 23 points.

“I knew once it was getting a little close I had to step in and make sure we got the win,” Leslie said.

Wheat Ridge just didn’t have an answer defensively for Leslie after he got going in the fourth quarter.

“Jordan can play,” Vince said of Leslie. “We’ll watch the film and talk about how to defend a kid like that. I don’t know how many of those we’ll see in (5A/4A) Jeffco. Not a lot I’m guessing.”

Junior Anderson Brendle contributed 19 points, including three 3-pointers to even Mullen’s record to 1-1 on the season.

“We are happy we won, but we can always do better,” Leslie said. “We’ve got ThunderRidge on Saturday. If we want to compete with them we have to play better.”

ThunderRidge is No. 3 in the CHSAANow.com Class 6A boys basketball preseason rankings.

“We played through the whole game,” Vince said of a positive to come out of the loss. “Last year we had a lot of games like that and it got out of hand. This group learned from that.”

The Farmers went 6-16 last year, but do return leading scorer Sam McCune. The senior had a slow start in the first half and got into foul trouble. McCune turned it on in the second half to finish with a team-high 19 points before fouling out with 2:47 left in the game.

“He is an all-conference player,” Vince said of Sam McCune. “The more he is on the court the better it will be for us.”

Wheat Ridge returns to the court next week playing in the Centaurus Tournament. The Farmers open up against Northfield on Wednesday, Dec. 7.