KARNS CITY — Coming off a 10-12 season a year ago, Chris Bellis had high hopes regardless for his Karns City boys basketball team.

“We always set the goals high,” the eighth-year Gremlin coach said. “Once I saw how well our team was meshing early, that belief of success grew stronger.

“But winning the district championship was on our radar all along.”

Karns City went on to post a 17-8 overall record — winning nine of its first 12 games — and claimed its first District 9 championship in 12 years.

That turnaround has earned Bellis the Butler Eagle’s Boys Basketball Coach of the Year honor for the 2016-17 season. He edged out Butler’s Matt Clement, Mars’ Rob Carmody, Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic’s Dave Long and Grove City’s Jeff Loughry for that distinction.

“All very deserving guys,” Bellis said. “Overall, I believe this was the best boys basketball season the county’s had in a number of years.

“This is pretty humbling. I’m very honored to win this, very thankful, but we’re not about individual things. This is definitely a team thing.”

Karns City defeated Brookville, 56-51, in the District 9 Class AAA championship game. Ian McElroy and Eric Dodd scored 16 points each in that contest while Noah Pollock added 14.

“Kids on this team were five years old when Karns City last won the district title,” Bellis said. “There is a lot of athletic pride in this school and it was important to these guys to put a number of their own up on that banner in the gym.”

A number of Karns City players — McElroy, Pollock, Jake Friel, Noah Kepple and Noah Riley among them — played AAU basketball last summer. Bellis said that helped the team get off to a quick start this year.

Add in football players like Chandler Turner, Jimmy Thompson and Dodd and the Gremlins had a nice mix.

“Ian McElroy developed into a leader on the floor. Jimmy Thompson was our best defensive player for the second year in a row,” Bellis said. “Eric Dodd just joined the team this year and brought a winning mentality from other sports. A lot of these guys were battle-tested.”

McElroy led the Gremlins with 13.9 points per per game. Pollock averaged 12 points and six assists per game, Turner 11 points and nine rebounds per contest.

“We had six different players lead us in scoring in a game at least once this year,” Bellis said. “Guys who were open consistently came through offensively.

“Defensively, our goal was always to hold the other team in the 40’s. We knew that would give us a good shot to win.”

Karns City was 10-1 this season in games it held the opposition below 50 points.

“You have to be able to defend,” Bellis said. “We expanded our defensive sets this year, used more junk defenses like triangle -and-two, box-and one, etc.

“Our top eight players were interchangeable. We could use them in a lot of ways and they played together. That’s why we were successful.”