The New Garden Friends Bears pushed their score all the way to 55 on Friday, but even that wasn't enough to win. They opened the new year with a less-than-successful 67-55 defeat to Victory Christian Center. While losing is never fun, New Garden Friends can't take it too hard given the team's big disadvantage in MaxPreps' North Carolina basketball rankings (they are ranked 175th, while Victory Christian Center is ranked 22nd).
Several Bears players turned in solid performances, despite ultimately coming up short. Perhaps the best among those players was Ottoni Guglielmo, who scored 15 points. Curtis Russell was another key contributor, scoring ten points along with three steals.
New Garden Friends' defeat ended a four-game streak of wins at home and dropped them to 8-6. As for Victory Christian Center, the win (which was their third in a row) raised their record to 14-5.
New Garden Friends will be playing at home against Cresset Christian Academy at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Victory Christian Center won't have much time to rest: their next match is against West Charlotte at 8:30 p.m. on January 6th. West Charlotte has insisted on making their lastthree contests complete nail-biters, turning in a record of 2-1 during that stretch of close contests.
