Mustangs top Knights to open league season
ACTON — Last season, under first-year head coach Mario Bates, the Vasquez boys basketball team won just two games the entire year.
The Mustangs won a nonleague game against Boron and its league finale at home against Desert Christian.
This year, in just the first week of the season, Vasquez has matched its win total from all of last season.
You could say the Mustangs are off to a pretty good start.
Vasquez used full-court pressure defense to force Desert Christian into 36 turnovers and cruised to an easy 58-20 victory over the Knights in the Heritage League opener, Thursday evening, at Vasquez High School.
“We were able to get a few turnovers. I was pleased with our pressure defense,” Bates said. “In transition, we want to run because we aren’t very tall. But sometimes we need to slow down and run our stuff.”
It wasn’t a very auspicious start to the game for the Knights. They were held scoreless for the first quarter and without a field goal for the first 8½ minutes of the game.
Sean Worrell stopped the bleeding for Desert Christian (1-2) with a putback following a missed shot to get the Knights on the board, with 7:38 remaining in the second quarter. The problem was, Vasquez (20) had already scored the first 16 points and led 16-2.
The Mustangs kept their foot on the gas in the second quarter as Johnny Abarghoei drained two consecutive 3-pointers to give his team a 28-7 lead. Abarghoei’s twin brother Adrian, then netted
another 3-pointer to extend the lead to 31-7.
A bucket by Adam Wyganowski with less than a minute remaining, capped a 13-0 run to end the half as Vasquez headed into the locker room with a 35-7 lead.
“I thought the first quarter was slow for us. We could’ve started better,” Johnny Abarghoei said. “We could’ve run up the score more. As a team, I thought we played really well. Everyone was talking and communicating out there. I think we need to pick up the pace earlier (in future games).”
Johnny Abarghoei led all scorers with 16 points. Teammate Jovi Francisco added seven points for Vasquez, which had a balanced offensive scoring attack.
Luke Dumas led the Knights with eight points, including two 3-pointers.
The shooting woes for the Knights continued in the second half as Dumas accounted for all three of Desert Christian’s field goals in the second half. It had several lapses in which it wouldn’t score a field goal for multiple minutes. Dumas’ first of two 3-pointers in the third quarter broke a 5½-minute field goal drought.
“Obviously, this was a rough one for us,” Dumas said. “We have a lot of firstyear players, including some seniors. But we can only go up from here.
“We definitely need to work on our press break. We were out there rushing too much and throwing up the first shot after we broke the press. That says a lot about our lack of experience. We had the first couple of game nerves, but mid-season and at the end of the season, I expect the scores to be different.”
Vasquez hosts Littlerock tonight at home, which Bates says will be a good test for his team.
“We ran our plays pretty well,” said Wyganowski, who finished with six points. “We were able to get stops on defense, which helped us win the game. We still need to clean some things up. Sometimes we just passed the ball to wherever. If we continue to focus, we can correct those things.”