On Friday night the Dons faced Clayton Valley in their last regular season home game of the year, in front of a great home crowd. It was senior night so Levi Rudin, Taran Krishnan, Tate Nelson, Noah Bloch and Nathan Krishnan were honored with their families. The game was one of the Dons best overall defensive performances of the season and it was awesome to see the large crowd cheering and chanting for the venerable seniors and the whole team. Taran opened the scoring with a 3 from the wing bringing the crowd to their feet. Jake Davis added a 2 on a nice feed from Theo Stoll but that was the extent of the Dons scoring for the quarter as several threes rattled out. Impressively, the Dons were leading as CV failed to score for the first 6 minutes and only managed one basket in the quarter as the Acalanes defense was tight and Jake had 2 huge early blocks making CV reluctant to come inside.
Things picked up in Q2 with Noah hitting a 3 and making 3 free throws after getting fouled on another, and Jack Bayless added a press break layup. Jack added a late 2 on a sweet backcut feed from Theo and the Dons trailed by 3 at the half, with CV on fire from 3 in this stanza, 15-18.
The third started off even with Noah hitting a baseline runner and Theo adding a 3 to tie it at 20, before CV ran off 7 straight to retake the lead. A late and 1 from Jake got it to 23-35 at the break, with CV hitting all their 3s in the quarter.
The Dons came out hot in Q4 with Theo burying a 3 from NBA range and then Justin Zegarowski hitting one from the corner after Jake’s 7th block of the game at the defensive end to cut it to 6. Unfortunately that was as close as it would get as a couple misses and some CV layups stretched the lead to 13. The Dons cheering section stayed loud until the end and saluted the seniors and the rest of the team as the clock on the home season ran down. The Dons showed real growth this season, playing much better basketball the last few weeks under new Head Coach Bill Powers and his staff, and appreciate your support!
