MORGAN HILL — The Oakwood boys basketball team was without three players heading into Tuesday’s contest with York, but told itself the show must go on.
The Hawks struggled early, but were able to find their groove to pull out a decisive 82-43 victory over the Falcons at home. The win improves them to 15-2 on the season.
Oakwood was without the services of one of its big men, 6-9 Justin Mortensen, who is out with a hip injury. The high scoring Nate Schilling and first-off-the-bench Ben Millward were also sidelined with the flu. Down so many key pieces to his team, standout freshman Youssef Eshra said he took it upon himself to pick up the slack. Eshra shined with a double-double of 28 points, 15 assists in addition to his seven rebounds.
“In my head I telling myself to play two times harder than I normally do,” the freshman guard said.
York took an early 6-3 lead in the first as the Hawks’ defense struggled. But freshman guard/forward Miley Batey stepped in for the injured Mortensen, finishing the night with a double-double of 14 points and 14 rebounds, to help the Hawks take and maintain the lead for good.
“We have a goal to not give up more than eight points a quarter; We talk all the time about that,” Hawks coach Kort Jensen said. “We were right there, we’d given up 19 points at the half, but in the third quarter we gave up 13 points. The difference is our starters. When you put a 6-9 kid out there they don’t drive because he blocks everything. (If) you put Nate out there and Johnny (Angulo) is healthy we do a lot of other presses and we just didn’t do that tonight. So defensively, we struggled.”
Oakwood’s other big man, 6-7 Zac Jenkins was second on the team in scoring with 23 points in addition to seven rebounds and a block. He was complemented by senior guard/forward Jonathan Angulo, who posted 12 points, two rebounds and two assists in the win. Jensen said he was surprised to see Angulo playing, having only overcome the flu the day before. But for Angulo, there was no way he’d miss this game.
“We came with only two guys on the bench,” Angulo said. “We were nervous and we had to change our starting lineup, so we didn’t know what to expect. They did get ahead of us, but we couldn’t let that effect us. Coach talked to us and luckily we got our motivation back.”
Oakwood jumped out to a 40-18 lead at the half and, despite the lead, didn’t let up and scored a game-high 25 points in the final frame.
The team will continue its quest to become league — and ultimately Central Coast Section — champions with a 6:30 p.m. contest Thursday at Anzar.
