The Sunnyside Wildcats waltzed into their match Saturday with three straight wins but they left with four. The stars were shining brightly for them in a 59-40 win over Taft. That looming 59-40 mark stands out as the most commanding margin for Sunnyside yet this season.
Malachi Barnes continued his habit of posting crazy stat lines, scoring 21 points. That makes it four consecutive games in which he has scored at least 25% of Sunnyside's points. Tanner Wilson was another key contributor, scoring ten points.
Despite the loss, Taft still got an impressive performance from Blaine Neudorf, who scored 21 points along with eight rebounds. The game was Neudorf's seventh in a row with at least ten points. The team also got some help courtesy of Ernie Laulu, who scored three points along with 14 rebounds and five assists.
Sunnyside is on a roll lately: they've won six of their last seven matches, which provided a nice bump to their 8-2 record this season. As for Taft, they now have a losing record at 5-6.
Sunnyside will be staying on the road on Tuesday to face off against Madera South at 6:30 p.m. on December 19th. Madera South will have to bring their A-game into this one, as they are staring down a pretty big deficit in the MaxPreps California Rankings (they are ranked 1079th, while Sunnyside is ranked 203rd). Taft and Templeton will face off at 6:30 p.m. on December 21st without much rest after finishing up games yesterday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (Templeton has nine straight wins, Taft has three straight losses), but none of that matters once you're on the field.
