Sailors need to be mean

This isn’t something new for the Newport Harbor High boys’ basketball team.

But the Sailors are too polite on the court.

“They need to get a little bit meaner. Stop being so nice,” Coach Larry Hirst said. “This is one of the nicest group of players that I’ve coached in my 25 years.”

It might be Hirst’s last team, too, for quite a while.

Hirst said he’s leaning toward taking a one-year sabbatical because his son Tanner is playing on the freshman basketball team at Edison, Hirst’s alma mater. Hirst said he wants to spend more time with son and watch him play.

“Right now it is 70-30,” said Hirst, playing the percentages game. “The kids know and the parents know that at the end of the year I’m going to evaluate whether I’m going to come back or not. This is new territory for me. I haven’t been given a deadline by the school.”

The only target for Hirst is to get the Sailors on track before the new year, when Sunset League play begins.

Before that, he will figure a way in his 13th year at Newport Harbor to toughen up his Sailors. They’ve already placed third at the Citrus Hills tournament in Perris. Next is a trip to the Bay Area to play in the tough Don Bambauer Memorial Christmas Classic Dec. 26-30 at Marin Catholic in Kentfield.

Starting in the middle, Hirst has his biggest and most talented player in 6-foot-9 senior Kyle Caldwell returning. The Sailors lost their other twin tower, first-team all-league 6-7 forward Weston Dunlap, to graduation.

Dunlap is at UCLA on the men’s volleyball team. Caldwell will join him next year on the volleyball court as he has signed a letter of intent with the Bruins.

In the meantime, Caldwell, a first-team all-league pick, will be counted on again. More production this time, even more than his 19.6 points and 12.4 rebounds per-game averages of a year ago, when he played with an injured right foot.

Caldwell is one of four players back from last year’s team that finished 16-12 and shared second place in league by going 5-5. The Sailors reached the CIF Southern Section Division I-A playoffs, and returning for a 12th straight year under Hirst shouldn’t be an issue, even though the league this year will be more balanced.

“Los Alamitos is still the league favorite, [it’s] the defending league champ and defending CIF champ,” Hirst said. “Last year I thought there were the top-echelon teams and the bottom teams. Now everyone has a chance to knock each other off.”

Joining Caldwell on the front line will be returning 6-4 forward Max Volz and newbie 6-3 forward Cecil Whiteside. The guard positions are up in the air with junior Michael Helfrich and senior Travis Kuhns, both returners, and senior Taylor Friend and senior Jamie Galey, both newcomers, in the mix.

Time will tell if this team will be able to go as far as last year’s, reaching the second round of the playoffs and becoming the fourth team in school history to play three playoff games after starting in the wild-card round.

“Right now we finally have the football kids on the court for the first time and we’ll have our first real practices,” said Hirst, who has averaged around 17 wins per season. “As for me, that decision will come at the end of the season. I’m just focusing on us this year.”

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at david.carrillo@latimes.com.