After a curing and restful week-long break, the audience hoped that the varsity boys’ basketball team’s dedication and commitment over the Thanksgiving Break would pay off in its game against the Anderson Trojans, on Tuesday, Nov. 27. Instead, spectators witnessed a heartbreaking loss of 47-37, despite the team’s continual efforts.

“We knew Anderson was a tough physical man defense team. We tried to work a lot of half-court man and work against some of their matchup zones stuff. We talked about shooters and their size and sides,” Coach Brad Hastings said. “Really, everything we talked about before the district [games] is getting ready to playing in the district – Anderson is an opponent that is a lot like our district.”

Unlike previous games, the Warriors persistently fell behind the Trojans, starting in the first quarter. Specifically, they trailed behind their opponents by six points and finished the quarter with a score of 10-4.

“We came out really slow; our shots went falling [and] they were getting a lot of offensive rebounds. I think that [this] is something we definitely need to improve on,” Santi Campos ’20 said

Despite the setback, the Warriors tried to inch back into the game. However, the team-to-team interactions were fairly static and yielded in a similar setback: a score of 21-14.

“We had a little spurt where we came back and went on a 12-0 run. We put ourselves too much of a hole in the first half,” Karthik Shetty ’19 said. “Overall, we had that good little period, but it wasn’t enough to come back and win the game.”

Nearing the end of the game, the Warriors defied all expectations by approaching a tie. With a point difference of four points, the audience was spellbound and anticipating an unpredicted win for the Warriors.

“We had another run that brought us within three [points]. I think the third quarter was our strongest quarter overall. We just needed to keep that energy the whole game,” Shetty said.

All in all, the team’s expectations failed, as the plethora of turnovers and missed point opportunities diminished any chance of victory. The game’s ending result was a score of 47-37 in the Trojan’s favor.

“I was satisfied with [today’s] effort. One of the things our guys always do is that they play really, really hard. I thought they did that, but we shot seven for 17 free-throws and basically we couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean,” Hastings said. “The shooting percentages were pretty bad. That’s the one thing that we talked about after the game was trying to get better at that and what you could do to improve your shooting percentage in the season..”

Watch the Warriors take their best to their next game on Tuesday, Dec. 4 against the Hendrickson Hawks.