On Tuesday, January 3, Country Day’s varsity boys basketball suffered a 41-32 loss against Western Sierra Collegiate Academy.
The Cavaliers played strong defense but struggled with finding offensive opportunities and limiting turnovers against Western Sierra.
Standout players included senior point guard R.J Vargo, who distributed effectively, facilitating play from junior center Derek Taylor and sophomore center Henry Wilson.
Throughout the game, Vargo scored a total of 9 points, while Taylor and Wilson scored 6 points each.
Taylor praised another player during the game; senior point guard Felix Wu.
“Felix has been doing really well recently. A lot of these teams have a star player, and he’s probably our star defender,” Taylor said. “He’s kind of getting on them and closing them down, and that’s been really useful.”
Western Sierra, who currently leads the league with a 3-0 record. was tough competition for the Cavs.
“They’re probably the second-best team that we’re going to face in the league, and I think we put up a pretty good fight against them,” Taylor said. “We lost by nine, and I think if we had just hit a few more shots, we would have easily won.”
Although the Cavs lost the game, senior power forward Ryan Paul said that the team put in their best effort.
“We played really good defense. Overall, we’ve really gelled together, and we had pretty good chemistry. We limited the turnovers, so that was pretty good as well,” Paul said. “As a whole, I think each of us contributed to the entire performance of the team.”
However, Paul said the team needs to brush up on its fundamentals.
“We need to make our layups. We’ve been missing quite a few. And that’s pretty important if we want to continue to get where we want to go,” Paul said. “Especially in the Golden 1 Center, in front of everyone, we want to be making those kinds of shots. We need to be able to work tighter as a group.”
Taylor agreed.
“We missed a few three-pointers, which, I mean, it’s just going to happen,” Taylor said. “But if we train them a little more, and if we get a few more open shots — we had a bunch of turnovers at one point — that would have been better.”
The Cavaliers will play their next home game against Valley Christian on, Jan. 12 in the Golden 1 Center, home to the Sacramento Kings.
— By Siri Atluri
