The Navarre Raiders waltzed into their matchup Friday with three straight wins but they left with four. They came out on top against Gulf Breeze by a score of 78-69. Having run the score up that high, both teams might be doing some extra defensive drills very soon.
Darius Cunningham was his usual excellent self, dropping a double-double on 42 points and 15 rebounds. The matchup was his 16th in a row with at least ten points. Trey Brauns was another key contributor, scoring 17 points along with five rebounds.
Despite the loss, Gulf Breeze still got an impressive performance from Trent Peak, who scored 29 points along with five rebounds. Peak scored a full 42% of Gulf Breeze's points, the fourth time in a row he's earned more than a third of the team's points. The team also got some help courtesy of Patrick O'Grady, who scored four points along with 18 rebounds.
Even though they lost, Gulf Breeze were working as a unit and finished the game with 21 assists. They easily outclassed their opponents in that department as Navarre only racked up ten assists.
Navarre is on a roll lately: they've won six of their last seven matchups, which provided a nice bump to their 9-7 record this season. As for Gulf Breeze, this is the second loss in a row for them and nudges their season record down to 7-5.
Navarre will head out on the road to face off against Fort Walton Beach at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Hopefully Fort Walton Beach focused on turnovers this week since the team gave up 12 last Friday. Gulf Breeze won't have much time to rest: their next contest is against Florida State University High School at 5:00 p.m. on January 6th. Florida State University High School knows how to get points on the board -- the squad has finished with flashy point totals in its past four games -- so hopefully Gulf Breeze likes a good challenge.
