Ron Vitug stresses one thing to his players and it’s the one thing they will need as the Sobrato boys basketball team prepares to enter Santa Teresa Division play: Focus.
Although the Bulldogs didn’t allow a lack of focus to sink them against Woodside Tuesday night, the mental lapses made the game closer than the 57-52 final should have been.
“I reminded them we need to focus for 32 minutes,” Vitug said. “The thing is, if we can focus for 30 minutes, we will continue to push out the lead because I think we’re talented enough with scorers and talented enough defenders. … We need to learn to play from the front.”
Sobrato had a decent first quarter, scoring 12 points led by senior point guard Tim Given’s six points, but Woodside found its shooting stroke early, taking a 19-12 lead.
The Wildcats hit a pair of 3s in the quarter to build its lead and had production from three different players leaving the Bulldogs on their heals.
Sobrato recovered in the second quarter and through much of the third, but a lack of focus in the final few minutes coming out of the half brought Woodside back into the game.
Sobrato built a 40-31 lead thanks to 3s from Givens and Walton, plus buckets from Noah Tasew and Santiago Jimenez.
But Woodside all but erased that lead thanks to a 7-0 run to close the quarter. The Wildcats took the lead to start the fourth quarter with a trey to make the game 41-40.
Just as he had done in the second quarter—that turned into an 18-point frame—Givens hit a big 3 that turned the final quarter.
“Tonight the scoring was outstanding in the first half,” Vitug said. “And not that I reminded him, he reminded himself that he is a point guard and needs to make everyone else better. That’s when Luke (Walton) started hitting 3s and Jason (Rhoads) started hitting 3s. His distribution was extremely valuable to us.”
In the second quarter, Givens had five points, joined by Jason Rhoads who also had five points and Luke Walton who had a pair of 3-pointers.
All three players finished in double figures for the game, led by Givens with 17, followed by Walton with 15—nine coming from beyond the arc—and Rhoads with 11, including four freethrows in the final quarter that secured Sobrato’s win.
Rhoads, in fact, had been held without a field goal in the second half after putting up seven points in the first. But Rhoads scored the team’s final four points, making four of six attempts from the charity stripe.
Sobrato for the quarter was eight of 13 from the line in the last quarter after going two of eight to that point.
“It’s way better than it was last year,” Vitug said. “Last year, we were 42 percent or something like that.”
Juan Lozano hit two of those fourth quarter free throws, which gave Sobrato a six-point lead. On the Bulldogs’ next possession, after giving up a bucket, Lozano gave his team the six-point lead back with a bucket.
The win puts Sobrato at 3-6 overall for the nonleague season. The Bulldogs will now have two weeks off before starting up against at Silver Creek 7 p.m. Jan. 7.
