The Delano Tigers will head out on the road to take on the Taft Wildcats at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday. One thing working in Delano's favor is that they have posted big point totals in their last seven matches.
Delano pushed their score all the way to 67 on Tuesday, but even that wasn't enough to win. They fell to McFarland 71-67. Delano has struggled against McFarland recently, as their match on Tuesday was their third consecutive lost matchup.
Despite their defeat, Delano saw several players rise to the challenge and make noteworthy plays. Ibrahim Shuwait, who dropped a double-double on 19 points and 19 rebounds, was perhaps the best of all. Shuwait has been hot recently, having posted 19 or more points the last five times he's played. Another player making a difference was Jotham Amodo, who scored 18 points.
Meanwhile, even though Wasco scored an imposing 58 points on Tuesday, Taft still came out on top. Taft took their match against Wasco 69-58.
Delano's loss dropped their record down to 19-9. As for Taft, they have been performing incredibly well recently as they've won seven of their last eight matches, which provided a massive bump to their 17-10 record this season.
Delano came up short against Taft in their previous meeting back in January, falling 76-70. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Taft's Blaine Neudorf, who dropped a double-double on 29 points and 17 rebounds. Now that Delano knows the damage he can cause, will they be able to stop him this time? There's only one way to find out.
