Preview: Antelope Valley Antelopes vs. Palmdale Falcons
Antelope Valley is 0-10 against the Falcons since January of 2019 but they'll have a chance to close the gap a little bit on Thursday. The Antelope Valley Antelopes will head out on the road to challenge the Palmdale Falcons at 5:30 p.m. Antelope Valley has now lost seven straight, and the team is hunting for their first win since January 3.
Last Tuesday, Antelope Valley took a serious blow against the Hawks, falling 78-34. While losing is never fun, Antelope Valley can't take it too hard given the team's big disadvantage in MaxPreps' California basketball rankings (they are ranked 1103rd, while the Hawks are ranked 232nd).
Meanwhile, Palmdale pushed their score all the way to 68 on Tuesday, but even that wasn't enough to win. They took a 82-68 bruising from Lancaster. Even though they lost, Palmdale's still made a splash on offense and bumped their average scoring up to 50.2 points per game (they're now ranked -1th in scoring overall).
Palmdale might have lost, but man, Jamari Owens was a machine: he scored 34 points. That was a full 50% of Palmdale's points, marking the fifth time in a row he's earned more than a third of the team's points. Carlos Munoz was another key contributor, scoring ten points.
Antelope Valley has not been sharp recently as the team's lost nine of their last ten games, which put a noticeable dent in their 6-20 record this season. As for Palmdale, they are on a five-game losing streak that has dropped them down to 3-23.
Antelope Valley couldn't quite finish off the Falcons in their previous meeting back in December of 2023 and fell 71-69. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Owens, who scored 38 points. Now that Antelope Valley knows the damage he can cause, will they be able to stop him this time? There's only one way to find out.
