Yucaipa is 2-8 against Redlands East Valley since January of 2019 but they'll have a chance to close the gap a little bit on Wednesday. The Yucaipa Thunderbirds will head out on the road to take on the Redlands East Valley Wildcats at 6:45 p.m. Both teams come into the matchup bolstered by wins in their previous matches.
Yucaipa posted their closest victory yet this season on Friday. They narrowly escaped with a victory as the squad sidled past Beaumont 43-40. The win was all the more spectacular given Yucaipa's disadvantage in MaxPreps' California basketball rankings (they are ranked 668th, while Beaumont is ranked 166th).
Yucaipa relied on the efforts of Jaxon Lerma, who scored 13 points along with nine rebounds and two steals, and Jonathan Campbell, who dropped a double-double on 13 points and 13 rebounds. Campbell has been hot recently, having posted eight or more rebounds the last four times he's played. The team also got some help courtesy of Tristan Doty, who scored six points.
Meanwhile, Redlands East Valley had already won seven in a row (a stretch where they outscored their opponents by an average of 14.3 points), and they went ahead and made it eight on Friday. They came out on top against Cajon by a score of 73-60. Having run the score up that high, both teams might be doing some extra defensive drills very soon.
Jeremiah Ivens continued his habit of posting crazy stat lines, scoring 26 points along with eight rebounds and eight steals. As a matter of fact, that's the most points he has scored all season. Caio Da Silva was another key contributor, scoring 19 points along with six rebounds.
Yucaipa has been performing well recently as they've won three of their last four contests, which provided a massive bump to their 11-13 record this season. As for Redlands East Valley, they pushed their record up to 16-7 with that win, which was their third straight on the road.
Some high-performance offense is likely on the agenda as the pair are some of the highest scoring teams in the league. Yucaipa hasn't had any problem running up the score this season, having only averaged 57.5 points per game. It's a different story for Redlands East Valley, though, as they've been averaging only 67 points per game. With both teams so easily able to put up points, the only question left is who can run the score up higher.
Yucaipa lost to Redlands East Valley on the road by a decisive 75-56 margin in their previous matchup on January 5th. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Ivens, who scored 21 points along with nine steals and eight rebounds. Now that Yucaipa knows the damage he can cause, will they be able to stop him this time? There's only one way to find out.
