The Skyline men’s Basketball team fell short against the Foothill College Owls by a score of 69-62 on Saturday, Nov. 16 in the Skyline College Gymnasium. The Trojans received their third loss in a row in their fifth preseason game. 

An intense game from start to finish, both teams showed excellent defense with the score at 2-2 five minutes into the game. The Owls finished the first quarter with a 9-point lead.

In the second quarter the Trojans attempted to make a comeback, but were unsuccessful. The Trojans made two consecutive three pointers to put the game in close reach at 47-49. The most exciting moment of the game came when the Trojans scored a three-pointer to put the score 62-65. 

Even though the Trojans fell short, head coach Justin Piergrossi said he was really optimistic and proud of the team’s effort.

“Really proud of how our guys competed, they played with a lot of effort, intensity and played together, so those are a couple ways that we try to evaluate our guys,” Piergrossi said. “The intensity they bring and the competitiveness is always at the top of the list… It was a challenging game for us but it feels pretty good how we came out and competed today.” 

Piergrossi said the Trojans faced a lot of adversity throughout the game with the team’s shooting accuracy and giving up offensive rebounds.

“We did not have a great shooting game, everyone wants to make shots but for us we are going to struggle to score if we don’t make a couple more shots, we only made one three in the first half that is why we had 20 something points, so we need to make a couple more shots,” Piergrossi said. “ We gave a couple too many offensive rebounds; those are probably the two biggest parts.” 

Skyline sophomore point guard, Zidane Auzarang said he knew the team was going to play a tough team with Foothill.

“We came in knowing that it was going to be a tough game and we went down in the first half by 11 and at half time we knew it was going to be a hard fought battle to get back in it and we got back in it, but it did not go our way,” Auzarang said. 

Skyline sophomore point guard Branden Anitporda said that being inexperienced played a big role in the team’s performance, however they fought really hard making the close game.  

“We are really inexperienced, a lot of freshmen guys we only got three sophomores on the team, but I feel like we fought really hard, we executed down the stretch, this wasn’t enough to get us to the finish line,” Antiporda said. 

The Trojans will look to get back in the winning column against College of Marin on Saturday, Nov. 22 at Marin College.