Girl’s basketball won 50-43 in their third non-conference match of the season against the South San Francisco Warriors. Going into the game, the Vikes knew this game wasn’t going to be an easy one.

“I expected it to be a really hard game, they’re a physical team,” Head Coach Scott Peters said.

Annika Shah (‘21) started off the game strong, scoring a 3 within the first 15 seconds. The Vikings dominated with the rebounds. The Warrior’s missed several opportunities to score by letting passes slip out of bounds in the key. The quarter ended with the Vikings up 18-6 with Shah putting up half of the points.

By the middle of the second quarter, the Vikings were able to bump up their lead to 10 points. They bring it up even more to finish off the second quarter up 30-19.

The Warriors went on a 6-0 streak for the first half of the third quarter, but the streak was broken by Shah with a layup. Shortly after, with another 3 by Shah, the Vikings earned back their 10 point lead. As the end of the third quarter approached, the Warriors started gaining speed. The third ended 35-32 with the Warriors catching up on that Viking lead.

The fourth quarter started off fast, with the Warriors immediately putting up 2 and the Vikes responding with 2 more points as well. The score remained 37-34 for the next 3 minutes while both teams’ defenses refused to let in a single point.

The game heated up once again as the Warriors stacked up 5 points. The vikings returned by putting up 4. Carly Martin (‘21) drove for the layup and drew the foul, bringing the score up to 44-39.  

At the end of the fourth quarter the Vikes banked 2 points and then 4 points off free-throws, finishing 50-43.

Even after a solid win like tonight, the Vikings are still always looking for small changes to improve their game.

“Throughout the season our defense in the first half has been really good and in the second half we’ve had troubles… we didn’t improve as much there,” Peters said.

Grace Thayer (‘20) agreed that the Vikings could improve on some aspects of their defense as well.

“We definitely made some late game adjustments when it came to defending #21 who was their main shooter…” Thayer said. “We also need to minimize the fouls because those really hurt us.”

With this win, the girls basketball team is now 2-1 and they look ahead to their Friday game in Aptos.