Riverside and Mid Valley are an even 5-5 against one another since January of 2020, but not for long. The Riverside Vikings will face off against the Mid Valley Spartans at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday. Each of these teams will be battling to keep a four-game winning streak alive.
Riverside can now show off six landslide victories after their most recent match two weeks ago. They really took it to Lakeland for the full four quarters, racking up a 69-31 win at home. While fans of Riverside might be used to big wins, the 38-point margin marked the team's biggest victory yet this season.
Meanwhile, it can be hard to translate regular season success to the playoffs, but Mid Valley had no problem doing just that on Friday. They sure made it a nail-biter, but they managed to escape with a 40-37 victory over the Chiefs. Given Mid Valley's advantage in MaxPreps' Pennsylvania basketball rankings (they are ranked 196th, while Lakeland is ranked 460th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
Multiple players turned in solid performances to lead Mid Valley to victory, but perhaps none more so than Demaja Dunston, who scored 17 points along with six rebounds. That makes it three consecutive games in which Dunston has scored at least a third of Mid Valley's points. Jakob Lesher was another key contributor, scoring ten points along with seven rebounds and three steals.
Riverside pushed their record up to 14-3 with that win, which was their fourth straight at home. Those good results were due in large part to their offensive performance across that stretch, as they averaged 62.0 points per game. As for Mid Valley, they are on a roll lately: they've won five of their last six contests, which provided a nice bump to their 16-8 record this season.
Riverside didn't have too much breathing room in their game against Mid Valley when the teams last played on February 8th, but they still walked away with a 40-35 victory. The rematch might be a little tougher for Riverside since the team won't have the home-court advantage this time around. We'll see if the change in venue makes a difference.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
