Boys basketball wins by 29 against Lawndale
On the night of Friday, Jan. 15, the Samo boys varsity basketball team defeated the Lawndale Cardinals 76-47 to improve to a 15-2 overall record and a 2-0 record in Ocean League.The Vikings played on their home court for the second time this year, riding on a nine-game winning streak. Straight out the gate, the Vikings came out hot, spotting up for open threes and running the floor in transition. Lawndale wasn’t shooting well from the field so it wasn’t surprising to see Santa Monica jump out to a 24-11 lead.In the second quarter, Lawndale turned up the defense and seemed to finally wake up, shrugging off the slow start. Santa Monica tried to rest their starters but had to bring them back in after their lead started to dwindle. The Cardinals were able to cut the lead to seven going into halftime down 30-37.But then Samo came out into the second half on a mission. Samo was everywhere on the court, and got good looks out on offense. The team played together and ran like a well-oiled machine. Coach Hect made defensive adjustments at the half, having his team buy into a tighter zone defense against the athletic players at Lawndale. Once the team did that, Lawndale was forced to shoot more jump shots which brought them off their game. The game was broken open by the end of third with the score at 55-35, with the Vikings only allowing 5 points. The fourth was pretty much the same as third, with the Vikings cruising to a victory. Lawndale’s main downfall was their inability to make their free throws, making it that much harder to beat a talented team like Samo. To cap off the large win, guard Rip Economou (’18) brought down the house with a monster dunk, winning the game at 76-47.Coach Hect had some insight for his team after the game about certain adjustments the team had made.“We knew they’re athletic, we knew they wanted to play up tempo. We have to preach taking care of the ball taking our bodies through the ball not just to the ball and making that extra pass,” Hecht said. “At halftime we knew even though we had the league I didn’t think we played our best basketball. I think we are getting caught up in the crowd a bit, we really enjoy playing at home. I thought we had a great start to the game, but then we started settling our bad shots were leading to transition buckets for them we were off balance in our defense transitioned because I thought we took some quick rush shots. So we just talked at halftime just about settling down focusing on what's going on inside the lines and just trying to make better decisions on the offensive end.”The Vikings enter the week with a home matchup against Culver on Jan. 20 and then they travel to rival territory to face a transfer-rich Beverly team on Jan. 22.