The Paly boys’ varsity basketball team faced off against the Gunn Titans Friday night as a part of Paly’s first “Quad Night” of the season.

The Vikings and Titans both entered the game knowing that to win they would have to successfully shut down one opposing player. Gunn struggled to slow down Viking senior forward Brian Baskauskas, while Paly succeeded in preventing Gunn sophomore forward Peter Jordan from his usual dominating performance, allowing the Vikes to pull off a 65-37 victory against the exhausted Titans.

“We made [Jordan] put the ball on the floor, and when he got close to the basket, we swarmed him” junior guard Jeremy Lin said. “No one can score when they are triple teamed.”

Both Jordan and Baskauskas have averaged over 20 points per game this season and despite Baskauskas’ seniority, the two went head to head in the beginning of the match-up. Jordan was often dominated by the overpowering defense of Baskauskas and other Paly players such as junior forward Steven Brown and senior center Greg Walder. Baskauskas and the other players who guarded Jordan are all taller and more experienced than the youngster and seemed to be able to capitalize on their height and age difference.

“Our goal was to stop him from getting into the key because he likes to do a turn around jump shot,” Walder said.

The quad night showdown had already gone in Paly’s favor for the first three games; girls’ and boys’ JV and girls’ varsity. Crowd momentum had been building and it seemed important to both schools that their varsity boys’ team win. The Paly boys wanted to finish the night by sweeping the Gunn competition, and Baskauskas’ 25 points helped the Vikings do so.

After Jordan won the jump ball over Walder, Baskauskas made a quick steal which led to five unanswered points for the Vikings; two from Baskauskas and a pull up three point shot by Lin. The Titans did not let the quick lead discourage them, and they came back with a couple of three point shots of their own, including two by junior guard Matt Johnson.

The score went back and fourth throughout the first quarter, and so did personal fouls. The Vikings put the Titans at the line much more than they had anticipated they would. “We weren’t playing the defense we wanted to. We just fouled too much, and we knew we had to stop giving them easy points from the free-throw line,” Walder said. At the end of the eight minutes, Paly led, 14-13.

“Our defense settled down in the second quarter,” said Vikings head coach Peter Diepenbrock. In the second quarter, the Vikings started playing a better, more controlled game, and their lead started to increase.

“We were getting pumped up, and not playing a team defense in the beginning of the game” Lin said. “We were getting caught up in what fans were screaming at us, but once we started playing team defense, the game started going the way we had planned.”

Going into half time the Vikings were ahead by nine, 29-20. Baskauskas made nine points off of many assists from Lin, and Jordan was close behind him with eight points. “We needed to get over the fact that they were hitting a lot of big shots on us, and just play our game,” Baskauskas said.

In the third quarter everything seemed to go wrong for the Titans. First, they started losing defensive focus, which Paly capitalized on quickly. Jordan then received his fourth personal foul and Titan head coach Chris Redfield was forced to take his star player out of the game. This gave Baskauskas the opportunity to let lose, and he did exactly that. The Vikings had a 22-point quarter while the Titans only scored seven.

In the second half, Jordan only scored six points while Baskauskas racked up 16. “All year [Jordan] had been called on to score key points and guard the other teams’ best player,” Redfield said. With the sophomore out of the game, both of these tasks fell to the rest of the Titan line-up. The two teams went into the final quarter with the score 51-27, and the game basically over.

The Titans scored 10 points in the final quarter, and the Vikings put in 14 to end the game, 65-37. “We played a very consistent game,” Diependbrock said. “We scored 14 points in the first quarter, and had 65 in the end.”

The game was the third conference game for both teams. Paly is now 3-0, and Gunn lowered its record to 1-2 out of the 12 game conference schedule.

The Vikings will meet the Titans once again during the Gunn hosted Quad Night on Feb. 4 at Gunn High School. “When we play [Gunn] again on Feb 4., we plan to play the whole game like we did in the second half [of tonight’s game]” Baskauskas said.

Paly’s next game will be Monday against Sheldon High School, the time and location of the game are yet to be decided.