Although the CESJDS girls basketball team lost against the McLean Mustangs, they began practice with blasting music, running laps, playing drills and stretching. The energy and passion that the players had for the game were evident through their warm-ups.

The game started with one foul point from the Mustangs and sophomore point guard Abby Alter scored a two-pointer. The Lions finished the first quarter 12-9, with McLean in the lead.

The second quarter started off slowly, with no points scored until about five minutes into the quarter. It was a tough and tiring game for all with much back and forth across the court without scoring. Both teams played a tough defense while still keeping the number of fouls to the minimum.

In the second half, both teams kicked it up a notch with intense defense resulting in much more fouls, but also more points scored because of this. Senior point guard Devira Friedman and Alter were the two top scorers throughout the game, Devira with eight points, and Alter with 15.

Despite this being freshman center Zoe Fischman’s first game coming off an injury, she still managed to not only keep up with the rest of the team but score a two-pointer in the third quarter.

With only 5 minutes left in the game, freshman point guard Avital Friedman scored a 3 pointer which set the score to 29-27, with McLean in the lead. Although the Lions were not able to recuperate from this score gap, they still played a hard defense which led to many fouls and free throws for the opposing team.

Silberman said, “I got frustrated for them because I know that they’re better than that, and when they make dumb mistakes I can see that they’re annoyed with themselves, but they sometimes lack confidence.”

In this game, they scored fewer points in the last quarter but for the last two games, the Lions scored 50% of their points in the fourth quarter.

Avital said what contributed to the loss was that they, “… really got congested in the middle of the court, causing us to make bad passes into the middle, and then making their defense easier.”

The Lions’ goal for this game was to tire the opposing team out because by spreading out the court, the opposing team gets tired very easily.

Avital said, “I think as a team, we just need to work on our passing, it’s just always been a struggle for us.”