Ripon High’s Varsity Boys Basketball game hasn’t had a large audience at any of their home games since their first game against their biggest school rival, Escalon. However, as an important game against, “in-town rival” Ripon Christian took place at the RHS home court, the gym flooded with students, teachers, parents, and other spectators to see a game that was predicted to be a close contest.
With all the hype leading up to this TVL competition, the Ripon High boys (16-4, TVL 5-0) worked hard as always in practice knowing that this game against RC (10-8, TVL 1-4) would be a strong indicator of how far they could hope to go into the season.
The game was tough, with the Knights having a series of surprising comebacks keeping the Indians on their toes as they fought to dominate the scoreboard throughout the game.
In defense of their players, the crowd roared their objections and encouragements towards the refs. There was, as Hansen would state, “bad calls [which can be expected to] happen at every game”.
Matt Hix described the game as, “A hard fought game, which was a dogfight the whole way, RC has good talent and they came ready to play.”
Anticipating The Knight’s strong offense, The Indians had chosen to focus on their defense in their practices leading up to the game.
When asked about how he believed the team performed, Coach Wright stated, “There’s always room for improvement when it comes to [our defense] but we played a good offense, and it was a good game.”
Matthew Hix, said, “We really came out ready to play as a team and trusted each other, our triple threat played a great game, Vincent Olmo did a great job stepping up when we needed him most.”
With the culmination of the extra efforts on defense, the team’s readiness to play hard, and their consistent success with the 3 pointers, the Indians were able to gain and maintain the lead from the third quarter through the majority of the rest of the game resulting in a victory. Hopefully, the momentum of this win will carry through the end of the season, through TVL finals, and all the way through sections.
The Indians will play Hughson on the January 31st at home and will play their big rival at Escalon on February 2nd. With a winning streak to maintain, the RHS Indians need as much support as possible as the season continues and encourages the community to attend their upcoming games.
