On Wednesday, February 2, the COS Giants basketball – both men’s and women’s teams – played a home game against the Fresno City Rams. Both of the COS teams came up with the win (The men’s team won 99-62, and the women’s team won, although they took different routes to obtain their victories.

For the Men’s team, the game started out pretty slowly in terms of offense for both sides, with it seeming like the teams were equally matched in their ability to miss shots in the first 10 minutes

Head Coach Dallas Jensen pointed out after the game that their shot selection just wasn’t where it needed to be during those minutes of the game.

“I thought early on it was the first to touch and we were shooting jumpers, which just isn’t our brand of basketball. I just thought when we simplified the game and played to our strengths that we played very well.” said Jensen.

As the game progressed though, that shot selection and ability to make shots overall just kept improving. With standout player, Ryan Johnson, dropping 37 points total on 7 3-pointers and 15 field goals.

His 14 made were not only the most on his team but also were just 2 less than the total amount of field goal attempts from the other players on his team combined, which totaled 16 overall.

Midway through the 2nd half, Coach Jensen subbed out Johnson to give him a break but put him back in just a few plays later, which was a treat for everyone in attendance that night.

“I liked the way he was playing, you know I liked his physicality, and we really just want to create great habits for the game” stated Jensen.

Those 37 points that Johnson scored clearly were a deciding factor for the win, but winning by nearly 40 points over a traditional rival is something different altogether.

This single game brought up the average points per game of the team from 81 to 84.3 and put the men’s team up to 18-4 overall as well as 7-1 in their conference. The Giants are now on a 5 game winning streak, and their next home game at the Porter house is Wednesday, the 9th of February.

As for the women’s team, victory did not come as easily for them as it did the guys, although it did end up being a 73-58 upset win for Giants, as Fresno City was ranked 3rd in the state compared to COS being ranked 16th.

What differentiates the men’s and women’s game most of all is that the women had actually already played against Fresno on January 8, getting handed an 83-56 loss in the process.

Although this loss wasn’t necessarily due to lack of ability from COS, but more of bad timing and covid protocols that kept players from being out on the court.

“You know that week, 6 kids had to go home [due to Covid]. So all we could do that week was just shoot free throws, and we had 16 days off from Christmas break where we got out of shape, so it was a bad time overall.”

Just like the men, the start of the game was a little rocky for the women, with the Giants only taking their first lead after a 3-pointer in the 3rd quarter put them up 27-26 with 4:23 left to play, and by halftime, the score was a nail-biting 29-28, with COS being out in front.

In the last two quarters though, there wasn’t much nail-biting to be done. Once COS had taken the lead at half-time, they would not relinquish it for the rest of the game, ending in an upset that will shake up the conference rankings.

COS Women’s basketball’s next game is against Merced, with a road game on February 5, followed by a home game two days later on February 7 at Porter House at 6 pm.