After beating Valley Christian in their third round of the annual Ryse Williams tournament, Boys Basketball looked to keep their undefeated streak just 24 hours later against Heritage Christian on December 2nd. Redondo stayed hot and beat Heritage Christian 76-61 in a very Redondo-dominated game to get a fifth win under their belt.
As this game was part of the Ryse Williams tournament, which is hosted by Redondo every year, “We really wanted to make a statement, show everybody who we are and how we come into this season,” senior point guard Devin Ringer said.
“Because we hosted the tournament, we had to win all our games. If we didn’t, it would have been a failure,” Ringer said.
The game started with some quick points from Heritage Christian. However, Redondo didn’t mess around for long, as they gained quick control and held onto it for the rest of the quarter, and led by double digits to end the first.
“They got off to an early lead, we weren’t playing our plan the best in the first couple of minutes, which was penetrating their defense and then kicking the ball out for knock down shots. Thankfully, we were swinging the [ball] around a lot and hitting shots, that got us out of trouble and we ended up with 32 points in the quarter,” senior forward Liam Smith said.
Redondo kept their momentum throughout the second quarter, as they ended up finishing it with an 18 point lead of 47-29.
“We came out and we kept the pressure on, we upped our defense a little bit and got a solid amount of steals with our press. We headed into halftime with a pretty solid lead,” Smith said.
Redondo’s lead diminished in the third quarter, going from being up 18 to only being up six by the third quarter’s end.
“Games can turn around quickly, like teams can go on [scoring] runs so quickly, and [Heritage Christian] did that in the third quarter, they went on an 8-0 run in less than two minutes,” Ringer said.
Adding 9 more points to their lead, Redondo controlled the fourth quarter and pulled off the win against the tough Heritage Christian team.
“Come the fourth quarter, we knew we had to bring the intensity, and our coach drew up some schemes that we executed perfectly. We ran one a couple times where Brayden Miner went to the corner and then Chris Sanders hit him for the three, we executed that play very well,” Smith said.
One play seemed to be Redondo’s dagger, dubbed “Boomerang”, according to Ringer.
“It’s really for a shooter, and for [Brayden] to be in the game, that’s the perfect time. We kept running the play and giving [the ball] to him. I’m the type of person to give the ball to whoever is hot, I had so much confidence in him that I knew he was going to make every shot he took,” Ringer said.
Though Redondo won, there were some struggles that have to be improved for the next game, according to Smith.
“We could have done a better job of offensive rebounding, also our defensive transition, we let them score a few times due to missed baskets and nobody being back down court to cover defense,” Smith said.
The team did many things well, but their best asset was sticking to the plan, according to Ringer.
“We stuck to what we know, we didn’t try to drift off and do something else, we stuck to what was going well,” Ringer said. “I felt like that was the big key, because there’s no point in fixing something that is already working.”
