Varsity Boys Basketball defeated Saratoga High School 73-65 on Wednesday, Feb. 5, bringing their overall record to 14-6 and their league record to 6-4. This match was a big win for the team, as their last defeat against SHS was during the 2018-2019 season. Despite many close calls, senior and small forward Vibhav Pata says the team was amped to come into this matchup, due to the history of close games between the two teams.
“We had amazing energy coming in,” Pata said. “Although we started off the first couple minutes really weak, when the first subs came in we started bringing in a lot of energy, and that was the momentum changer of the game. Starting from then, every person who stepped on the court stepped up, so we were able to bring a lot of energy for the entire game.”
Both teams started the first quarter shooting well from the field, going shot-for-shot resulting in a first-quarter score of 17-14 in favor of SHS. In the second quarter, MVHS picked up the pace after making adjustments to the defense, holding SHS to just eight points, resulting in a halftime score of 30-25. Senior and guard Stanley Du said the team improved from the first-quarter deficit by increasing their efforts in rebounding the ball.
“During timeouts, we talked about boxing out a little better,” Du said. “We were at first giving up a lot of offensive boards, so they were able to score many second-chance points. We boxed out a little more then, and they had less and less opportunities to score putback shots.”
The match remained neck and neck throughout the third quarter as MVHS’ lead narrowed to just two points, ending the quarter at 51-49. Late into the fourth quarter, MVHS faced a one-point deficit until sophomore and guard Daniel Ji scored two three-pointers, and Pata went four for four from the free throw line in the final two minutes, solidifying the win for MVHS. Senior and forward Ninad Suresh emphasized that despite the lack of shots, he was contributing in other ways to help his team come back late in the game. He shared that as a whole the team displayed strong team work particularly near the end of the game.
“We played really good and we came in clutch in the last minutes because some of our teammates really stepped up,” Suresh said. “For the next game, we mainly need to improve how to rotate, mainly because they were just hitting a lot of shots, so we need to figure out how to help the helper so that their shooters don’t get open and hit a three because that was hurting us the whole game. But I think we can just continue to play how we played today since there is not much else to improve on. The main focus would just be to carry our momentum into the next game.”
