Saturday, November 30, 2024
Record: 1-1

The Junior Varsity Boys’ Basketball team had a dominating performance in their home opener. The young Dons soundly defeated their opponent 76 to 29. With the win, the JV team sits at 1-1 for the season.

Going into the season, JV Coach Eric Thomas felt that his current team was extremely deep and just as talented as his Don’s team from last year. High praise considering his team won the Diablo Valley League Championship and finished with a 22-4 record. Unfortunately, the young Dons season started off wrong with a loss to Monta Vista. It was time for the JV team to meet their coach’s expectations.

Both teams struggled offensively early in the game. Yet, the Dons displayed tenacious defense as they waited for their offense to awaken. And awake it did behind #11, Bryce Mansour. Bryce made a nice step by layup to get the Dons on the board. The young guard followed this shot with a 3 pointer. The Dons were now up 5-0. Bryce’s backcourt mate, Sam Phillips, started to attack inside. Sam, one of the team’s captains, had a nice bunny hop layup for a score. Sam made another layup to increase the Dons’ lead to eight. Then AJ Del Santo erupted. AJ, #32, scored the next nine points for the home team. He hit three three pointers in a row that got the home crowd on its feet. The Dons led 20-5 after the 1st quarter.

Dons carried the energy into the 2nd quarter. Foothill made a nice back cut pass and score to start the period, but from this point on, it was all Acalanes. Ben Mickelson started his team scoring. Anthony Heglie and Kaya Wingate each stole the ball and scored. The depth that Coach Thomas spoke about was now on full display. Caelan Augustine scored as well as Nolan Potts. In fact, Potts, #3, contributed five straight points. The Dons were rolling. It was only fitting that AJ Del Santo who started the onslaught, officially ended the half with a dagger three pointer. At halftime, the home team led 44-20.

The Dons opened the third quarter with Bryce Mansour hitting a deep three pointer. The young shooting guard followed up his deep three with a layup. Dons now up by 31 points. Wonderful ball movement continued for the home team. Jackson Boselli had a beautiful pass to Caelan Augustine, #24. Caelan followed his layup with a three pointer. The Dons simply could not be stopped. Sean Khow and Shea Stahl distributed the ball nicely. Sean, the only junior on the team, scored and pushed the lead to forty points. After three quarters, the Dons were in command, 73-23.

For the last quarter, Coach Thomas, who is a strong advocate of sportsmanship, showed his opponents’ respect. He had his team take down their tempo, aggressive defense, and barrage of three-point shots. The quarter was filled mostly of ball movement and a few well timed shots. In fact, the young Dons only scored three points for the quarter, well below their pace of 22-25. The game ended with a final score of 76-29.

“We are going to be a great team this year.” Proclaimed junior Sean Khouw. Sean, who plays point guard, further added: “The team chemistry is great. My role is to lead this group and show them the Don way. We are really good, but sometimes we focus on a bad play and let it impact us. We need to learn to move on and play.”

By the JV performance on Saturday, the young Dons followed Sean Khouw’s advice. They put Monta Vista behind them by crushing their next opponent. The JV Dons will look to build upon their dominating performance at the John Rhodes Tournament. Please come out and support our Dons.

Reported by: Spencer and Steve Clark