Looking for its fourth Heritage League win of the season and 17th straight, Santa Clarita Christian School boys basketball showed its dominance against Lancaster Baptist at The Master’s University on Monday.
Holding the visitors to just three points at halftime, the Cardinals were able to get contributions from the entire team, soaring over the Eagles to 96-15.
“It’s just good to get reps,” said SCCS’s Caden Starr. “Get guys minutes that don’t get a whole lot of minutes. The biggest thing is not try to disrespect the opponent by not playing, but still going out there and competing.”
Beginning the game on a 30-0 run through the first quarter, SCCS (15-8 overall, 4-0 in Heritage League) came out firing hitting four 3’s in the quarter and finished the game hitting 19 overall.
Starr led the Cardinals in scoring with 29 points on 10 field goals, nine of which were 3’s.
SCCS dual-sport athlete Ethan Schwesinger came off the bench immediately contributing on the boards and second-chance point opportunities.
“It’s such a tight-knit group,” Schwesinger said. “Every practice it’s fun, it’s so unselfish, such a good environment and honestly, this is the best team I’ve ever played on.”
Schwesinger came off the bench to score 17 points (three 3’s) with 11 coming in the second half.
Down the stretch, Lancaster Baptist (1-13, 0-7) was able to score some garbage points, finishing the second half scoring 12 of its 15 points.
With the win, the Cardinals have four more games left in the regular season, two non-league games and two Heritage League games.
Going 7-4 against 11 Division 1 schools with the likes of Fairfax, Sierra Canyon and Etiwanda, the Cardinals picked up quality wins over the course of the year defeating Bishop Alemany, Mission Bay of San Diego, Dorsey and their most recent win coming over the weekend in a 46-32 victory against George Washington Prep.
“The things that we try to do is using those games as a measuring stick and understand what we need to work on everyday,” said SCCS head coach James Mosley. “I think sometimes teams do the name recognition thing and just assume, but I think people know who we are now. I think it has been a good learning lesson for our guys.
“You show up to win games, you don’t show up starting within yourself. The process is getting locked in.”
The Cardinals face a tough Division 4AA team in Pacifica Christian at 7 p.m. at Heritage Christian on Saturday.
“We need to come out strong this weekend,” said SCCS’s Kaleb Lowery. “We just have to keep the intensity up like we have been playing the last couple weeks.”
“Going through the season was really tough because at first we were losing a lot of games, but then adversity hit us and we realized that if we practiced really hard and play against good teams then we should eventually mesh and that’s what’s happening right now,“ added SCCS’s Justin Collins.
