Grace Brethren Christian School’s JV boy’s basketball team won the PVAC JV Basketball Championship, Monday, in a 55-35 rout over CESJDS at St. Anselm’s Abbey School.

The game, which was delayed almost two weeks by multiple snow days, matched up two teams that did well during the PVAC regular season as well as the playoffs. During the game, however, only Grace looked like the winner it had been throughout the season.

After a Grace basket and free throw with four seconds left in the first quarter, the JDS morale was low, while Grace could smell blood in the water.

The second quarter began with a 4-0 JDS run, but JDS quickly let the game get out of hand by the end of the first half, when the score was 31-17 in favor of Grace. JDS was notably less physical than Grace throughout the half, as Grace opened a wide margin in the rebounding battle.

“Our guys haven’t been rebounding well,” JDS boys varsity basketball head coach David McCloud, who was at the game as a spectator, said after the first half. “They need to get into the game, they need to play hard.”

The second half was more of the same, as JDS could not recover from the 14-point deficit it had at the half, falling behind 20 points by the end of the game. The team’s morale kept falling with it, as players on the bench could be seen with their hands over their heads and consoling one another as the clock winded down.

“I think this was a great team,” sophomore forward Caleb Gershengorn said. “It’s a tough way to end the season but it was just a good game and in the end, they got the better of us.”

In a game in which the Lions as a team did not play very well, Danny Zweben stood out with eight points, nine rebounds, and five assists. However, in the immediate aftermath of the game, Zweben was not thinking about his personal performance.

“I’m proud of us,” Zweben said. “We played our hearts out and we brought it all today.”

JDS coach Brian Westerman echoed that sentiment.

“This loss today doesn’t talk about the kind of season we had,” Westerman said. “We had a lot of success, played a lot of good basketball. These guys grew as people and they grew as basketball players. This is the best team I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching and unfortunately [Grace’s] shots fell a little bit more than ours did tonight and they got more rebounds tonight. It was a tough one.”