Boys’ Basketball Faces Challenges Returning To Court

The varsity boy’s basketball team played for the 1st time on January 13 against Clayton Valley Charter High after their season was halted due to a COVID outbreak. The team won with a final score of 50 to 45.

Shooting guard junior Logan Robeson said, “It was a good outcome. But you know, not all wins can be pretty and last night was definitely an ugly win. But in the end, we’re 1 and 0 and to start League and that’s all that we really wanted at the end of the game. So we got it done.”

Robeson was out with a broken hand for 6 weeks prior to this game, and said it was “special” to be back on the court.

Besides Robeson, the rest of the team was unable to play for 2 weeks due to a COVID outbreak among the team.

Coming back to play, guard junior Shane O’Reilly said, “[Missing some games due to COVID has] taken us out of our rhythm I’d say. Not as much stamina-wise as people would think, but more so just playing together as a unit. Not having Matt [Radell]…not having him play for a month, [it] was a little rough getting him back in the system. But after yesterday’s game we should be good.”

Center senior Tyler Vineyard sees the brighter side to the pause in the basketball season: “[Not playing for 2 weeks] affected our chemistry because we haven’t been able to play with each other for a while, but it’s also helped some people get back in the swing of things and just get healthy and get ready for League play for the next month.”

Both Vineyard and O’Reilly contributed the win to teammate and guard senior Aidan Mahaney. “It all comes down to defense in the end. Our guy Aidan Mahaney played great defense and the leading score and held them down I think under double digits and it really was a big key for us,” said O’Reilly.

Vineyard noted, “1 of the main struggles we had [was] offensive rebounds, allowing them to get too many easy offensive rebounds for 2nd chance points and the fourth quarter we were just struggling to score the ball which allowed them to have a small comeback.”

Robeson added, “Yeah [we need to work on] just staying locked into the 2nd quarter. Our defense kind of faded as the game went on. And I think that we need to keep the same high level on defense throughout the entire game, not let that kind of fade away in the 4th quarter.”

O’Reilly agreed, “Some struggles in the 2nd half were getting the ball in the basket. They made some defense adjustments…Giving up too many rebounds, that’s where they really killed us and got back in the game.”