Preview: Casa Roble Rams vs. Yuba City Honkers
Two dominant players in Benny Ambriz and Saleem Rafiq are getting ready to go toe-to-toe. The Casa Roble Rams will head out on the road to face off against the Yuba City Honkers at 7:30 p.m. on Monday. Casa Roble has been dominant on offense recently, as they've racked up an incredible 602 points over their last eight matches.
Casa Roble scored the most points they've had all season to find success on Monday. They breezed by Valley at home to the tune of 84-33. The match was pretty much decided by the half, when the score had already reached 46-14.
Casa Roble's success was spearheaded by the efforts of Ambriz, who scored 27 points, and Moses Oginni, who dropped a double-double on 16 points and ten rebounds. Oginni set a new season high mark in assists with seven. Jake Tennant was another key contributor, scoring nine points along with three steals.
Meanwhile, Yuba City humbled Wheatland with a 71-38 victory. Given Yuba City's advantage in MaxPreps' California basketball rankings (they are ranked 510th, while Wheatland is ranked 1263rd), the result on Saturday wasn't entirely unexpected.
Rafiq continued his habit of posting crazy stat lines, scoring 18 points along with five assists. Those five assists set a new season-high mark for him. The team also got some help courtesy of Anthony Medina , who scored 13 points along with five rebounds and four steals.
Casa Roble has been performing well recently as they've won four of their last five contests, which provided a nice bump to their 6-2 record this season. As for Yuba City, the victory got them back to even at 4-4.
Keep an eye on the arc in Monday's matchup: Casa Roble have made nailing deep shots look easy this year this season, having only averaged 6.6 threes per game. It's a different story for Yuba City, though, as they've been averaging only 8.5 threes per game. Given Casa Roble's sizeable advantage in that area, Yuba City will need to find a way to close that gap.
Casa Roble didn't have too much breathing room in their match against Yuba City in their previous matchup back in December of 2022, but they still walked away with a 68-63 victory. The rematch might be a little tougher for Casa Roble since the squad won't have the home-court advantage this time around. We'll see if the change in venue makes a difference.
