The East Union Lancers picked up their third straight non-conference victory Tuesday night against very game River Islands Riptide squad, 81-56.
East Union (3-1) built on the defensive intensity it established last time out against Foothill in a game in which it allowed just two points in the fourth quarter by coming out swarming River Islands (2-4) early on. End-to-end defensive pressure and four steals helped the Lancers jump out to a 15-1 lead just three minutes into the game.
“I was ecstatic with our energy early on,” East Union coach Dalton Ell said. “We knew coming in they were a good team, and we needed to come out and jump all over them, and we were able to do just that.”
The Lancers forced nine of their 12 total steals in the first half, many of which led to easy buckets in transition — including a thunderous dunk on an outlet pass by senior forward Rico Johnson.
Johnson (11 points), along with his brother and leading scorer Ayande Johnson (19 points), were two of five Lancers in double figures in a balanced scoring attack for Ell.
Tyler Pettis (15 points), Zydell King (12 points) and double-double machine Lorenzo Jones (12 points, 13 rebounds) rounded out the leading scorers for the Lancers.
“We have a lot of new faces, and in a lot of ways are still figuring out who we are going to be as a team,” Ell said. “But we know we’ve got the guys, and on any given night, a different guy can go off which makes us a dangerous team.”
River Islands, in the middle of a very difficult preseason stretch, found themselves down 32-11 early in the second quarter Tuesday night. Head coach Justin Graham challenged his team to fight back.
“When I put together this schedule, I went into it thinking we can compete with all of these schools,” Graham said. “Obviously, early on they got after us a bit, but after we weathered that storm, I felt like we competed, and that is all I can ask of them.”
River Islands was led offensively by the duo of Idrees ElfFarra (nine points) and Darius Radoc-Factoran (21 points), who helped the Riptide slowly battle back throughout the second half, at one point cutting the East Union lead to 13 early in the fourth quarter.
“We’re still figuring out who we are going to be as a team, but we know we’re never going to give up,” Radoc-Factoran said. “The way we played early on was too much to overcome tonight, but you saw later on what we can do when we focus on both ends of the court.”
East Union seemed to have an answer for every mini run that River Islands went on in the second half. Strong offensive rebounding from Jones gave the Lancers second chances, and key plays on defense by King (six steals) and Jackson Fay (three steals) helped the Lancers eventually put away their hostsin a game that at times felt closer than the final score would indicate.
“We’re going to do the little things,” Ell said. “These guys love defending, they love drawing charges, and when we can win the rebounding battle like we did tonight behind Lorenzo, it’s going to put us in a good position to win games.”
For Graham, the hope is that games like Tuesday’s will have the Riptide ready come regular season and beyond.
“We’re not going to schedule teams we can beat by 50 in non-conference,” he said. “We wanted to challenge our guys playing teams like East Union, and we saw tonight that we can and will compete with them. Now, we just need to work on doing it for a full 32 minutes.”
Up next, both squads are tournaments later this week. For East Union, the Gene Honk Williams Memorial Tournament at Vacaville High School gets underway on Thursday. River Islands will compete in the Argonaut Quarter Back Club Tournament that tips off on Wednesday.
