Basketball Game Preview: Bear Creek Bruins vs. Atwater Falcons

The Bear Creek Bruins and the Atwater Falcons will face off at 5:30 p.m. on Friday without much rest having both just played. One thing working in Bear Creek's favor is that they have posted at least 55 points in their last six matches.

Bear Creek picked up another tournament win on Thursday. They wrapped up 2024 with a 64-46 win over Union Mine. Given the Bruins' advantage in MaxPreps' California basketball rankings (they are ranked 320th, while the Diamondbacks are ranked 1011th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.

It was another big night for Elijah Duncan, who posted 19 points. The contest was his tenth in a row with at least ten points. The team also got some help courtesy of Xavier Terry, who had 11 points.

Meanwhile, Atwater had already won two in a row (a stretch where they outscored their opponents by an average of 8.5 points) and they went ahead and made it three on Thursday. In a tight game that could have gone either way, they made off with a 40-39 victory over the Panthers. The 40-point effort marked the Falcons' lowest-scoring match of the season, but in the end it didn't matter.

Bear Creek is on a roll lately: they've won five of their last six contests, which provided a nice bump to their 7-3 record this season. Those victories came thanks to their offensive performance across that stretch, as they averaged 64.8 points per game. As for Atwater, their win bumped their record up to 12-1.