The men’s basketball team beat the Folsom Lake College Falcons with a score of 80-63 on Friday, which marked their ninth consecutive win.
It was sophomore night, the night in which players who are not returning are honored before the game. The following sophomore players were honored: guard Kyree Dunn, guard Brandon Scott, wing Kaleb Drake, guard Ja’Rod Webb, wing James Gill, guard Solomon Evans and forward LaDarious Stanfield.
The Hawks dominated most of the game with constant possessions ending in a score and good ball movement.
“Our team thrives when we stay consistent,” said Head Coach Jonathan James.
The game began with the Falcons winning the tip-off, but Scott scored the game’s first basket for the Hawks.
The Falcons started off the game in a full-court press defense, which slowed down the Hawk’s offense at first.
After being tied up at 19-19, the Hawks quickly formed a lead with Scott scoring nine points and freshman guard Karlos Zepeda right behind him with eight. The Hawks would go into halftime up 41-24.
“We executed the game plan here and there. Got a bit lazy, but I just kept telling them to stay focused,” James said. “We didn’t want to lose that focus with sophomore night going on.”
Coming out of halftime, the Falcons continued with the press defense and trimmed down the lead to 12 with a score of 62-50 with around 11 minutes to go in the game.
“We had a little bit of a slump in the middle of that game,” Zepeda said.
After calling a few timeouts the Hawks started to break the Falcon’s press defense with more passes allowing them to take control of the rest of the game and hold the lead.
“We played a bit sloppy,” Scott said. “It didn’t go exactly how we wanted, but we still got the win at the end of the day.”
When asked about the win streak James said he wasn’t even aware of it.
“I didn’t even know it was our ninth straight,” James said. “It’s all about taking it one game at a time. Trying to go 1-0 every single game.”
The Hawks will try to finish the season strong.
“We still got three more to go if we want to win that Big Eight championship,” Zepeda said.
The focus will now turn to the Sacramento City Panthers, Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.