Dragons have their new Boys Basketball Coach.

Written Wednesday June 3rd, at 3:00 PM

The Orion Dragons have their new boys basketball coach and it's a familiar face.

Jim Manzo was named head coach late Monday night replacing Tom Risi whom resigned in early May.

Manzo was the coach of the Dragons from 2000-2008 and was a former player from the 1988 season. He has had players like Brad Neary, Kojo Asideu, Randy Frye, Marc Thompson, John Krause, Justin Diesbourg, Joe Barnes, Ross Tonyan, and Drew Maynard, among others.

Oddly enough he was the last Orion coach to knock off Dan Fife and Clarkston in 2007.

Manzo left in 2008 for family reasons. The program has not been stable, since he left even though Risi took the Dragons to the state quarterfinals and won its first district and regional since 1925 in 2012.

Manzo will be the fourth boys basketball coach in seven seasons (Lance Davis, Mike Shafkalis, and Risi were the other three.) He has had success at Waldon Middle School in both football and basketball as the seventh grade coach and with this current freshman class coming in he led Waldon to an undefeated season in both football and basketball in 2013.

He will inherent a team that should be a serious contender this upcoming winter. Last season Orion went 4-17 and 3-7 in the White and this season moved down to the Blue and will have experience coming back. The Dragons return four starters and had a solid junior varsity team coming up that finished 14-6.

This will be an interesting ride and is a game changer for sure, so we'll see what happens.