Alexander Olivas is ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism student covering Cesar Chavez High School for AzPreps365.com

Another win, extending the streak.

The Cesar Chavez Champions men’s basketball team gets the victory Friday against the West Point Dragons on senior night and extend its win streak to 20 games, 63-45.

Cesar Chavez entered the game with an ongoing 19 game win streak that started after their last loss in November and looked to win 20 straight at their final home game while honoring their fellow seniors on senior night. 

The team coached by Marcus Wright and Danny Clontz, so far have held a 7-1 record while playing at home and then improved to 8-1 after securing another victory in their final game at home.

“I think the guys take pride and we spend so much time here in this gym, for someone to come from the outside and beat us on our own court we take that seriously,” Wright said. “The crowd has been great over the last year, it’s been a noisy area and the guys feed off of that energy”.

The start of the first quarter was a bit rough for the Champions with the Dragons starting off strong and soon after a timeout, the Champions then rallied themselves and even went on a 6-0 run to end the quarter, 12-12. 

Onto the second quarter, Chavez completely dominated the Dragons on both sides of the ball by scoring 22 points on offense and limiting the Dragons to just 10 points with a fast paced offense before leading at halftime, 34-22.

“What we kept preaching over and over was to just get consecutive stops on defense and then once we did that, we created a few turnovers and then that led to a lot of transition buckets,” assistant coach Clontz said. “We had to make just some minor adjustments to what we were doing because they were doing a good job with countering some of the things that we were doing”.

After halftime, the Dragons came out storming in the third quarter and took control for the majority of the quarter scoring 13 points, however, the Champions still kept fighting back and held the Dragons to a three point lead, 38-35.

Once the fourth quarter arrived, it was all Chavez as the Champions picked up their momentum to go on a 12-0 run during the quarter and scored 25 points and only allowing the Dragons to 10 and went on to claim the victory.

Senior and shooting guard, Dante Stallworth, led the team in tonight’s game with a total of 22 points in what was his final game at Cesar Chavez while wearing the uniform for one last time on home court. Even after the game, Stallworth felt some emotions but also gave insight to what he felt worked not only for him but for the team in the game and all season to keep the win streak going. 

“It’s just my last night for senior year so I had to make it count, it was a great team win, everybody moved the ball around and shared the ball, I felt it was a great game,” Stallworth said after the game. “It makes me feel good to know last year we were 19-6, now we’re 22-2 and we’re running it up this year”.   

Other key contributors of the game included junior shooting guard and small forward, Alexander Clontz, who dropped 12 points and junior shooting guard Gabriel Briones who dropped 10 points, but both also made an impact by creating turnovers which led to shots being scored on offense. 

“We come into every game thinking it’s a championship game, you know,” Briones said after the game. “We just never take any team for granted, we just play our hardest every game, we got to end things strong and end the season great”.

For Clontz, he gives the mindset of moving forward to end the season before playoffs and how that mindset will help them be successful to make a long run.

“We’re just trying to get those wins because we’re right at the edge of a home open game for playoffs and that’s our main goal,” Clontz said. “We love being the underdogs you know, it’s our sign to execute, so we’re going to get through everyone in front of us”. 

Before the game, Cesar Chavez came in ranked as the 16th seed in the open division and looking for a win next week to end their last game of the season which could potentially lead to securing a home court playoff game depending on other game results. 

Cesar Chavez (23-2) will visit the Shadow Ridge Stallions (12-12) on February 5 at 7 p.m.

West Point (17-7) will visit the Valley Vista Monsoon (8-15) on February 6 at 7 p.m.