Girls’ basketball: Challenging season comes to a close

Photo by courtesy of Zineerah Ahmed

The Falcons face off against Homestead on Jan. 12.

The girls’ basketball team stood at 2-9, ranked seventh in the De Anza league as of Feb. 10. Their most recent games were a 39-27 loss against Lynbrook on Feb. 9, a 71-56 loss against Los Gatos on Feb. 7 and a 60-48 win against Homestead on Feb. 2 — a win that broke a 5-game losing streak. 

With losing preseason and league records, senior point guard Tanya Ghai said she is doubtful that the small eight-player Falcon roster has secured enough wins to qualify for CCS. Despite two key victories against Homestead — 60-48 on Feb. 2 and 45-42 on Jan. 12 — the team lost the most of its games and now stands at a 6-17 overall record. 

She attributes their losses to the instability caused by the team’s constantly changing roster, such as when the varsity and JV teams were merged due to a lack of players. She said that “unnecessary outside noise” took a toll on the team’s mental state.

“I think our team faced a lot of adversity this season,” Ghai said, “with showing up and not knowing how things are going to go. But I think we did a really good job of putting that past us and trying hard every game, to see if we could get a good outcome. Sometimes we did, and sometimes we didn’t, and that’s just how the cards fell.”

The team will end its season with their senior night against Los Altos at home on Feb. 14. Definitive results for CCS qualification are expected to be released on Feb. 15. 

The team’s starting lineup consisted of Ghai — the team’s star player and leading scorer with an average of 18.8 points per game  — junior guard Zineerah Ahmed, junior center Priyanka Meduri, sophomore guard Urvi Iyer and sophomore center Riley Adler. 

According to Ahmed, head coach Josh Rivera and assistant coach Jaston Rivera picked up the intensity of practices while maintaining their rigorous schedule of training two hours a day, six days a week. For the last few games of the season, the team worked on implementing offensive plays like press breaks and setting up their transition defense quickly after turnovers.

Despite their losses this season, Ghai is proud of the team’s growth. After spending all four years of high school on the team, she said playing her final games as a Falcon is bittersweet.

“I think it was a good season,” Ghai said. “Obviously, we didn’t get a lot of games, but we all grew and learned as basketball players. I think that’s the most important thing.”