The Greenwave varsity boys basketball team found their sea legs in the Legacy Tip-Off Classic in Las Vegas with two losses and two wins to begin their season.
The tournament gave Fallon a 2-2 record overall before league play begins.
The Wave started the tournament by struggling with a 20-point deficit in their loss to the Mojave Rattlers, 56-34.
Clay Davidson led Fallon with 16 points, with four 3-pointers.
Davidson was one of the six players who scored against Mojave including Connor Richardson, Cade Vercellotti, Dalton Kaady Jr., Kaleel Rickerson and Braxton Hunter.
Richardson followed close behind Davidson with four baskets while Vercellotti, Kaady, Rickerson and Hunter each scored a basket.
“Mojave was a great basketball team with some real great players,” Fallon coach Brad Barton said. “We played well, even though we were short a couple kids after we had some disciplinary issues with a kid who missed practices over Thanksgiving. But the way I see it is we played a very good basketball team, and were better at a lot of things we worked on.”
Barton said the game was much closer than the final score, but his players couldn’t finish it off and gave up some baskets that made the difference. Barton said still, overall, he was happy with the way Fallon played.
The loss to Mojave didn’t slow Fallon down, and the team won a narrow 41-37 victory over Saint Aloysius from Australia. Barton said he had the full Fallon team back and worked on several mechanics that would prepare them for the regular season in this game.
Barton said Dylan Ridenour, in particular, had a good basketball game as he predicted, and Kaady was a standout during the whole tournament. Ridenour scored nine points. three 2-pointers and three free throws, while Kaady had two deflections that helped change the pace of the game.
“Dylan had some great shots, and Dalton took care of ball for us and ran the point most of the tournament,” Barton said.
Barton went on to say he believed Mojave was a far better basketball team than the Australian team with more athletes, and although the Australian team shot well, the team “Down Under” had little size that left Fallon able to get points under the rim.
Though it would be their next loss, Barton said Fallon’s game against Canyon View was its best game of the tournament despite a 63-51 loss. Despite the score, Davidson had one of his first highlights of the season by scoring five three-point shots within the first three minutes for 15 points.
This was some of the best shooting Fallon had done all weekend, Barton said, although Canyon View had some good shooters of their own, leading to a brief 40-40 tie in the fourth before Fallon closed with a loss.
Fallon wouldn’t finish the tournament without leaving on a high note with their widest point gap yet and won with a 60-26 victory against Robert Bateman, a Canadian team.
Ridenous scored 10 points behind Davidson’s 13, while Kaady scored six points tying for third with Rickerson. Davidson scored three 3-pointers, and Vercellotti scored one 3-pointer as well.
“We put together a really good performance defensively and offensively,” Barton said. “Everybody got in the game and everybody could contribute so it was nice to have everybody in there. Like Aloysius they didn’t have a lot of size, so we went inside, and shot a lot better than before. We got to fast break them and get points off of turnovers. We did everything we wanted to do we did in that game and it was nice.”