The Cholla Chargers will head out on the road to face off against the Ironwood Ridge Nighthawks at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (Cholla has three straight wins, Ironwood Ridge has eight straight defeats), but none of that matters once you're on the field.
Even though Rincon/University scored an imposing 67 points on Friday, Cholla still came out on top. Cholla had just enough and edged Rincon/University out 69-67. For those keeping track at home, that's the closest win Cholla has posted yet this season.
Multiple players turned in solid performances to lead Cholla to victory, but perhaps none more so than Michael Payne, who scored 21 points along with two steals. The team also got some help courtesy of Jerry Mendoza, who scored 15 points along with seven assists and six rebounds.
Meanwhile, Ironwood Ridge pushed their score all the way to 72 on Friday, but even that wasn't enough to win. They fell to Sunnyside 78-72. Despite running the score up even higher than they did in their last game on Thursday (70), Ironwood Ridge still had to take the loss.
Cholla is on a roll lately: they've won four of their last five contests, which provided a nice bump to their 11-5 record this season. As for Ironwood Ridge, they bumped their record down to 4-14 with that defeat, which was their third straight on the road.
Everything went Cholla's way against Ironwood Ridge when the teams last played back in January of 2023 as Cholla made off with a 77-56 win. Does Cholla have another victory up their sleeve, or will Ironwood Ridge turn the tables on them? We'll have the answer soon enough.
