Fallon's Hayden Strasdin races a South Tahoe player to grab the ball during Saturday's Fallon home game.
As the second half of the season gets underway, the Greenwave boys’ basketball team claimed two wins over Sparks and South Tahoe, cementing its claim for second place in the Northern 3A.
Fallon coach Chele Dalager said it was an important weekend for Fallon. She said the wins put the Greenwave one game up on the Fernley Vaqueros in the three-way tie for second.
“We’re sitting in a good spot right now,” she said.
Though Sparks put up a hard fight, the Greenwave held the lead the whole game. In the first quarter, Fallon claimed an early lead on layups from Trey Rooks and Hayden Strasdin. While Railroaders Martin Garcia, Vashisth Patel and Avery Sheppard fought to close in, the Greenwave pulled ahead, 25-14.
The Wave nearly doubled its score in the second, passing the ball well. Sheppard, Isaiah Johnson and Jarren Comia scored for Sparks, while Brock Richardson, Thomas Steele, Jace Harmon, John Cooley and Strasdin added points for the Greenwave, 47-25.
The Railroaders scored another 10 points after halftime, Patel, Johnson and Franky Guardado pushing through Fallon’s defenders. Fallon kept ahead, though, scoring another 17 points from Steele, Strasdin, Cooley and Richardson, 69-35.
The final quarter was nearly even.
Saturday’s game was hard fought, though South Tahoe never closed below a 10-point spread, 69-55.
Fallon claimed a lead in the first quarter. By the time the buzzer sounded, the Greenwave had a 13-5 lead on baskets from Steele, Strasdin, Cooley, Rooks, Richardson and Christian Nemeth; South Tahoe’s Ruzzell Valiente and Matt Cain had points for the Vikings.
The second quarter saw South Tahoe push to close the gap. Vikings Carl and Ruzzell Valiente opened with back-to-back baskets, followed close by a series of layups from Caleb Moretti and Ruzzell Valiente. Nemeth pushed through, starting a run of seven baskets from himself, Cooley, Strasdin and Elijah Jackson, broken only by a trey form Valiente. Dylan Chatraw and Cain brought in two final baskets for Tahoe before the half closed 32-24.
Fallon came out in the third quarter pushing further. The final quarter was pretty even with both teams trading baskets, but the Greenwave held solid through the end.
Dalager said Saturday was a frustrating game. While Fallon won, she said nothing seemed to go right. She said Fallon struggled with turnovers. Cooley added their defensive intensity was down in the first half.
“I think toward the end of the game we did a better job of handling the pressure,” Dalager said.
Dalager added South Tahoe is fast and aggressive.
“Our style of basketball, it’s hard to play two games back to back,” Dalager said.
This weekend the Greenwave travels to Elko and Spring Creek to kick off the second half of the season.
Dalager said the outcome would be determined by how well they get into the game after traveling. She said Spring Creek has some big players who didn’t play earlier this season, so it would be a different game.
Cooley added they didn’t have Jackson or Christiansen when they played earlier in the season. He also said the team did well against Spring Creek before and a strong defense would be key.
“We’re really going to have to knuckle down and play some better defense, not give up as many points in the second round as we did in the first round,” Dalager said.
