Senior Charlie Reis led the Giants to a narrow victory over Drake on Friday night, scoring 26 of Redwood’s 56 points. Reis dominated under the hoop, making many of his points off of rebounds and lay-ups.

However, Redwood’s win came with a fair share of tension and excitement. With less than 20 seconds on the clock, Drake’s junior point guard Noah Bice brought the game to a 51-54 stand-off by scoring a three-pointer. However, with 9.9 seconds left in the game, Reis secured his team’s 51-56 win by scoring two free throws.

“My favorite play of the game was probably the free-throws at the end. Just being able to be on the line and sink those free-throws to secure the win for my team, that was a really big moment. I’m glad I was able to put them in and convert,” Reis said.

At the start of the second half, Redwood began trailing by just under 10 points, adding to the tension of the game.

“We were letting them get too many open shots,” Reis said. “I think [Bice] was hitting a lot of open threes, so we made an adjustment and started playing him a little tighter on defense. We stopped him from scoring so much, and we were able to come back.”

But according to sophomore Chance Farrell-Martin, who plays point guard for Redwood, Drake’s temporary control of the game was not unexpected.

“Before the game, our coach said they were going to go on a run, and that’s basketball.  It’s just weather the storm and get back into the game,” Farrell-Martin said.

Farrell-Martin also guarded Bice, and found him to be a strong opponent.

“[Bice] is really quick off the dribble, and he’s also really strong and he knows little moves on the post that are really hard to guard,” Farrell-Martin said.

According to Farrell-Martin, effectively guarding Bice required keeping him off of the three-point-line by staying close to him on defense and having the team stay aware of his position on the court.

On defense, Drake attempted to use a zone trap to strand Farrell-Martin in the backcourt.

“They were playing a zone trap against us, and so we basically just had either me or one of the other big guys run to the middle and get a pass to move it around and break their press,” Reis said.

According to Farrell-Martin, when the Pirates pressed him while he was bringing the ball up the court, he got the ball out of his hands and to a teammate quickly to break the press.

“We knew they would be loud, fast and really primitive,” Farrel-Martin said. “But we knew we had to pack it in and run them off the three point line so that’s what we executed tonight.”

Ryan Pesce, Inua Ramos Andrews and Noah Bice are the Pirate’s biggest threats according to Reis. During the game, Andrews and Bice netted the most points on their teams, with 15 and 16 respectively.

“We know they have a couple of good shooters, so our game plan was to try and lock them down and make sure that they weren’t heating up in the first half. And we were able to do that pretty successfully,” Reis said.

Senior Brendan Shepard guarded both Ramos Andrews and Bice. He said that he worked on taking away their outside shots as well as stopping their drives to the middle.

“It was just a great team win. We came back in the second half, and we all played well together as a team. I’m hoping we can continue to do that for the rest of the season,” Shepard said.

The Giants’ next match is an away game on Jan. 24 at 7:30 versus Marin Catholic.