The Cardinal Mooney Cougars were the 49-46 winner over the Sarasota Sailors when they last played one another back in February of 2023, but their luck changed this time around. Cardinal Mooney opened the new year with a less-than-successful 52-47 loss to they on Friday. While losing is never fun, they can't take it too hard given the team's big disadvantage in MaxPreps' Florida basketball rankings (they are ranked 207th, while Sarasota is ranked 46th).
Despite the loss, Cardinal Mooney still got an impressive performance from Connor Heald, who scored 24 points along with five rebounds. Heald scored a full 51.1% of Cardinal Mooney's points, the eighth time in a row he's earned more than a third of the team's points. The team also got some help courtesy of Kevin O'donoghue, who scored ten points along with five rebounds.
This is the second loss in a row for Cardinal Mooney and nudges their season record down to 8-7. As for Sarasota, the victory makes it two in a row for them and bumps their season record up to 11-2.
Cardinal Mooney will head out on the road to face off against Imagine School at North Port at 7:30 p.m. on Monday. Imagine School at North Port is coming into the match on a four-game losing streak. As for Sarasota, they will look to defend their home court on Tuesday against Venice at 7:30 p.m. Hopefully Venice focused on turnovers this week since the team gave up ten last Saturday.
