The boys’ basketball team took down the Space Coast Vipers 53-40 Tuesday night lead by Evan Lanier with 15 points and Keegan Schauman with 11 points.

Last month, the Wildcats lost to the Vipers in the preseason, but junior Khalil Paul said his team is better now than it was at that time.

“I believe that when we played them in the preseason game we weren’t as good and we came out expecting and easy win and everything to go smoothly, but they really gave it to us,” Paul said. “With that being said , last night we knew what we were capable of and came out strong and got and early lead and never let up.” 

Senior Juan Rodriguez explained Coach Tony Riopelle’s strategy heading into the game.

“Coach gave us four keys that we had to follow in order for us to win the game, ” Rodriguez said. “Key  number one was boxing out and getting rebounds, key number two was to limit our turnovers, key number three was to do our individual job and key number four was to finish strong at the rim . We did every  single one of those things which ultimately lead to the easy win over a very good team.” 

The team has been on a four-game win streak which has lead them to their current 7-3 record. Rodriguez said he believes the team can keep up the hot streak.

“I definitely think we can keep our streak up, at least up until after the Bronson tournament, because we square off against Melbourne Central Catholic after the tournament,” he said. That’ll be a tough game no matter what, but I can definitely see us continuing  to win more games and adding to our win streak.”

The boys next take on Astronaut Thursday at 7 p.m. in the West Shore gymnasium.

By Carl Koko