The Skyline Trojan’s basketball season is soon to start, and to help improve the team for the upcoming regular season the Trojan’s have been playing a series of pre-season games. On Dec. 4 Skyline faced off against Monterey Peninsula College at home. While the final score may be deceiving, the efforts of the Skyline Trojans was not.
While Monterey did put up 75 points against Skyline’s 63, the loss does not seem to be in vain. “I saw much improvement in the passing game and the team mechanics in this game over the last. A lot more cohesiveness through the team”, says Skyline spectator Jeffrey Hughes.
The Trojans did seem to be in sync with each other the majority of the time. Many players where making tough passes, including some traversing the whole of the court, and many would swarm to the ball or know the right place to be to get the ball. One memorable play was when freshmen guard Shawn Echols made a fast pass to team captain, forward Darren Morrison, who cut through two unsuspected defenders for two.
When it came to individual efforts some Skyline players looked simply brilliant. One who I have mentioned before team captain Darren Morrison, who led the team in points for the game, was great not just offensively but defensively as well. One such play was when Morrison swept fluidly in front of Montery’s guard, Martel Israel, and plucked the ball right from his hands leading up to a two point spinning basket.
Another Trojan bright spot was from the play of center Mario Flaherty. Mario’s dominating presence in the middle of the key makes it hard for opposing players to simply just shoot over him, which is probably why last year he led the team in blocks with sixteen accredited to him. But don’t over look his offensive presence as well. Last year he led the team in offensive rebounds and was tied for second highest free throw percentages on the team.
But while some plays were spectacular it seemed like the Trojans seemed to get in their own way a lot as well. Sometimes it was simply bad fouls during inopportune times and others it was a lack of capitalizing on openings. For instance, on a play late in the game Echols stole the ball from a Monterey defender and had a clean break opportunity only to loose the ball and give it back to Monterey who proceeded to score for two.
While there may be some gripes with overall defense and such, this years Trojans seems to be a much more improved unit as a whole over last years. With a bunch of new players starting this year and the jelling of a team who seems to know what there doing, this might be the year Skyline returns to a winning schedule and perhaps even a championship.