Ryan Ladika/MDN Senior Dalen Engg, center, is averaging 10.6 points per night in eight games for the Mustangs this season.

When the Surrey Mustangs boys’ basketball team took their first look at their 2021-22 schedule during the offseason, staring back at them were seven contests away from their home gymnasium among their first nine overall.

The team entered the season with a few questions to answer. How would a daunting stretch of road games affect the Mustangs from the start? How would a group with only four seniors meld with a new head coach leading the charge? Would Surrey be able to avenge its 2021 first-round regional defeat and reach its first state tournament since 2001?

The answer to the last remains to be seen, but the Mustangs have already drawn up a solid response to the first two: your home court is our home court.

“We kind of took that atmosphere that no matter where we play, it’s going to be our home court,” first-year Surrey head coach David Jackson said. “Our guys have just embraced it. That’s kind of keeping that mentality that every game we play is at home; we don’t care where we’re at.”

The mindset among the team has paid early dividends, as the Mustangs have prevailed in all but one of their first nine games this season, including a pair of wins at Velva High School during the Velva Invitational and one each at Garrison, Parshall, TGU Towner and Bottineau.

Surrey has earned its eight wins by an average margin of just over 22 points per game, and its only defeat to this point came at the hands of the 7-2 Aggies in the Velva Invite title game by a 52-47 final score.

“We have a really good group of kids that are trying to adapt to what we’re trying to do and the style of play that we want to create and build a program,” Jackson continued. “That’s one thing that we’ve talked about since I’ve got the job is building a program that the community and everybody can be proud of, and I think we’ve started that.”

The Mustangs sport a balanced attack on both ends of the floor, led by junior William Mayo and senior Dalen Engg’s 14.4 and 10.6 points per game, respectively.

Fellow seniors Kekoa Munos and Jagger Dickman are not far behind the two on the offensive end with 9.7 and 8.7 points per game, and Jackson pointed to sophomores Trevyn Christianson and Lucas Vollmer’s prowess in helping lead Surrey’s performance on the defensive end.

“(Christianson) comes in and just plays defense tremendously for us and he’s able to lock other people down,” he said. “(Vollmer) doesn’t score a whole heck of a lot, but he gets the other team’s (leading) scorer and he’s kept those guys way underneath their average.”

Jackson noted that the biggest reason his transition from Drake-Anamoose, the program that bested the Mustangs in the Region 6 tournament last season, to Surrey has gone so smoothly is directly because of the student-athletes he now coaches on a daily basis.

The Mustangs are fortunate enough to boast a robust program not only at the varsity level, but on the junior-varsity squad as well, Jackson said, and all are hungry to build the community and type of upper-tier program that will make Surrey a formidable Region 6 presence.

“We have 25 kids out that want to play, our junior high program is picking up numbers, so it’s our job as a coaching staff now to make sure that we can teach our philosophy,” the Mustangs coach continued. “We have kids that want to show up, want to play, so our kids are there, they want to learn, and that’s all you can ask for as a coach.”

With the season’s second half on the horizon, the Mustangs will also receive a well-deserved respite from their travels. Six of Surrey’s next eight games are slated for its home court, but with them come an edge for the Mustangs’ competition.

“Everybody wants to beat you on your home court. When you start racking up wins, then people want to come beat you, you’re going to get everybody’s best shot. We just have to be able to handle it, and right now I think our kids are ready for that.”