Lawrence High basketball players, from left, Sam Allen, junior, Brandon Johnson, senior, Anthony Harvey, senior, Fred Brou, senior, Jake Rajewski, sophomore, Freeman Brou, sophomore and Noah Butler, freshman, run through ball-handling drills during Lawrence High's summer workouts in the school's West gym on Wednesday, June 10, 2015.

Summer workouts have a different feel this year for Lawrence High’s boys basketball team.

The state-title-or-bust expectations are gone. Graduated starters Anthony Bonner, John Barbee and Ben Rajewski are no longer on the court. Even senior Justin Roberts has to sit on the sidelines, out for six months because of a torn ligament in his left knee.

But the Lions still have plenty of optimism for the upcoming season, motivated by people doubting they can replicate the success of last year, a 23-2 record and a trip to the Class 6A state title game.

“It was a fun season,” senior Anthony Harvey said after a 90-minute workout Wednesday in the school’s auxiliary gym. “It was a hard question when people asked me if it was a state-title-or-bust year — it wasn’t. We grew a lot closer as a team, and everybody got a lot better. There’s so much improvement, and I’m just excited.

“People are sleeping on us, ‘Oh, you guys had one chance.’ I think we’ve got just as good of a chance. We’ve got a whole bunch of good guys. We have a good coaching staff. We’ll be all right.”

With Roberts out with his injury, the Lions have been led in camp by seniors Harvey and Fred Brou. Price Morgan, who has started at center for the past two seasons, also shows up when he can outside of football practices.

Juniors Jackson Mallory and Kobe Buffalomeat also return with some varsity experience. Most of them never stopped playing, even after their season ended, organizing shootarounds during the spring sports season.

“I don’t feel like we’re really missing a beat,” Brou said, “because we’ve got a bunch of guys who, regardless if they were a starter or not last year, we were still playing against all of the starters last year and giving them good competition.”

The biggest summer adjustment for the Lions is playing without their floor leader, Roberts, who averaged 17.5 points and 2.9 rebounds per game last year.

“You take a kid like Justin out of the gym, and the gym just feels different,” LHS coach Mike Lewis said. “Here’s a kid who has been our starting point guard since his freshman year, just got through leading our team to a state-championship basketball game, and then he gets an injury, and it’s almost like a somebody popped a balloon, and we’re like, ‘OK, what are we going to do now for the next couple of weeks?'”

The goal will be learning to play without Roberts, giving some of the other players a chance to learn the nuances of the point-guard position or pick up the scoring on offense.

“It’ll give some people a chance to show up and shine, to step in his role,” said the 6-foot-5 Brou, one of the several players looking more bulked up after spending time in the weight room. “Hopefully we’ll have him back as soon as possible, but it gives everyone a chance to kind of play without Justin on the floor, which we will have to experience even at some points when he’s back. It gives us valuable experience.”

The Lions will send 25-30 players to the Kansas University team basketball camp for three days, starting June 19. They will have two varsity squads at the camp and one junior-varsity team. Lewis also noted the freshman class “immediately started to gel” in the first week of workouts and has fit right in.

“It’ll be a great weekend for our program,” Lewis said of the KU camp. “We’ll get in, and we’ll get to play a bunch of games, see the guys play against different competition. Then after that weekend, we can kind of evaluate where we’re at and start to set up some scrimmages and go from there.”