Tomorrow night at 7 p.m., this year’s senior players will step out onto the court for what could potentially be their last game, a playoff match. They came into the season with high expectations, expected to be one of the top teams in the county. However, they failed to meet them despite playing many of the top teams extremely closely. The team has been working tirelessly to rectify their inconsistencies.


“We’re working on defense. Defense wins championships,” said coach Bill Morris. “And we’re really working on executing on offense.”

After finishing the season 10-10, they drew the eighth seed in the 4A West Division bracket, earning home court advantage for at least the first round. Their opponent will be Gaithersburg, a team that they have already beaten twice this season, 66-57 at Gaithersburg and 78-58 at WJ.

“It’s a good match up, even though they don’t have a record that’s very formidable,” said senior Henry Tollefson. “The disparity between teams in this league now is so much smaller than it has been. Just because we got a team that has a lesser record, and even though we got Springbrook second round, doesn’t mean we get to play down, we still have to go after it.”

If the team wins, they will face first seeded Springbrook in a rematch of an earlier loss this season and of last year’s second round game in which eventual state champion Springbrook defeated WJ.

“Springbrook is undefeated, but when we played them we were up at the half and we were pretty confident that we could stick with them,” said senior co-captain Carl Yaffe. “If we were to play them in the second round of the playoffs this year we would just go in really strong and try to get up early.”

As exciting as a rematch would be, the team is not looking past the first round just yet.

“I’m glad we’re playing them because we’ve beaten them twice already,” said senior co-captain Nash Oh. “But both those games were fairly close in the beginning and they’re a team that’s looking to prove something, so we’re going take them like any other team. We’re not going to take them lightly.”