CUPERTINO — In basketball, the tallest, fastest, strongest team usually wins.
But when that team also plays harder than the opposition, that’s almost a certain victory. So it was on Friday night at Homestead High School.
Homestead, which had a distinct size advantage, also was the more assertive team, taking charge in the second quarter to build a 17-point halftime lead. The Mustangs maintained their double-digit advantage from there, cruising to a 71-59 win and improving to 4-1 in league play.
“We played really good team basketball,” Homestead coach Matt Wright said. “Right now, in the last three games, our defensive effort has been really, really good. It’s been awesome. In practice, our bench players who may have not gotten in the game, they have helped us win. What they do to us in practice, the effort that they put in, they’re pushing us to get better every single day.”
It was a strength in numbers sort of night for Homestead (12-3), which has won its last four games and seven of the past eight. Brian Chou led the Mustangs with 30 points, but Homestead also got contributions from James Yoshida (nine points), Kyle McDivitt (eight), Will Hamburger (seven) and Ashton Tam (six).
“Nightly, we play probably nine to 10 (guys),” Wright said. “They’re the hardest-working bench I’ve ever had in my coaching career. One of our best players (Hamburger) got in a lot of foul trouble tonight, so he had a lower-scoring game. But the guys stepped up and filled the stat sheet where he usually does for us.”
For Monta Vista (10-4, 2-3), Friday’s game was the continuation of an unfortunate trend. In order for the Matadors to be successful, they must excel in the finer details of the game like team rebounding, outside shooting and winning possession of loose balls.
The game slipped away from the Matadors in the second quarter, when Homestead controlled those statistics to stretch its six-point first-quarter lead well into double digits. Lack of hustle plays has been a recurring problem for Monta Vista of late.
“We’ve been struggling with the physicality part of the game,” MV coach Wade Nakamura said. “The defensive boards have really been hurting us, and it hurt us in the first half. We’ve been digging ourselves a hole because we have not been getting on the D boards with five people. You just can’t do that in boys varsity basketball. Unless you have a giant inside that can clean the boards, which we don’t.”
Similar tendencies occurred in Monta Vista’s recent losses to Saratoga and Fremont-Sunnyvale.
“We have not done that in every game we’ve struggled in,” Nakamura said. “It happened again today. They had their way with us early, and then we tried to come back. We could never get over the hump. That team can score, you know? They got some seniors. They played confidently. They’re solid.”
Daniel Ji led Monta Vista with 14 points, followed by Stanley Du with 13.
Homestead’s challenge moving forward will be to build upon the momentum of its strong start in league play. The Mustangs’ only loss within the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League’s El Camino Division was an overtime defeat at the hands of Saratoga, a game Homestead lost 70-67 on the road.
“Our goal is to make practice harder than any game, so we feel like we’re confident,” Wright said. “No matter what defense a team throws at us, we can score against it. We’ve had a couple high-scoring games this year already, and we hope to continue with it. It’s a good year for Homestead basketball right now.”
