"We'll have to wait and see in tryouts," said Coach Paul Baranowski regarding Charlie Gal's chances of making the La Jolla High varsity basketball team. Gal, a strapping 6'5", 220-pound 16-year-old, "had his moments" during the Vikings' unseemly 85-27 thrashing of El Capitan Sat., Oct. 31, in the Mount Miguel tournament.
Unseemly, because it was on Halloween? Don't know, but the game wasn't competitive from the start, with the Vaqueros stuck under 10 points for a long stretch of the game.
Gal, who subs in up front for Alex Pitrofsky and Morgan Albers, is reaping the benefits of Daniel McColl's and Nick Hammel's involvement on the Viking football team. With them occupied in the fall sports season, Gal and others who would sit longer gain more playing minutes.
Asked if he had been told he already made the varsity, Gal said "No." Baranowski confirmed that after the game, the first of two Saturday afternoon for LJHS. After the 2 p.m. blowout game in Mt. Miguel's darkened gym, La Jolla was going to have to make the trek south to play their second game at San Ysidro. That's the way the tournament was set up.
Baranowski inquired how the football team did the night before. He expressed concern about his two players, due to the fact that McColl is going both ways for the Viking football team and faces a greater risk of injury in doing so. With a limited roster, several team members (six or more) play on both offense and defense.
The El Capitan game did not afford La Jolla much of a chance to work to improve. It just wasn't competitive. In the Montgomery summer tournament that LJHS participates in, the situation is much the same, with most games not pushing the Vikings to their limits.
The good thing is that what La Jolla could do, it did. The Vikings ran right by the out-manned Vaqueros on offense. Lefty Quinn Rawdin showed a lot of freedom in movement, and put up a lot of shots from the outside as well. Pitrofsky wasn't tested and had his way offensively under the basket. Team leader Reed Farley, now a junior after two years starting on the varsity, was a calm, reassuring presence. He had several shots from his spot in the offense, the right baseline behind the three-point line.
In El Capitan's defense, their basketball program may have been suffering from the same thing La Jolla's was--key players occupied with football. Only the regular season will tell.
Copyright 2015 Ed Piper
No comments:
Post a Comment