The Palo Alto High School boys’ basketball team vanquished the Saratoga Falcons (11-4) Tuesday night in a 57-47 victory at home.

The team improved to 12-1 behind a game-high 27 points from senior guard Aubrey Dawkins. Senior guard Aldis Petriceks added 11 points.

After going up by 14 points in the first half, Paly maintained its lead going into the fourth quarter. The Falcons came back to cut it to single digits, but Dawkins secured the win with two timely dunks in the last two minutes of the game.

After two baskets by forward Keller Chryst to start the game off, Paly took control, leading 14-8 after the 1st quarter. They came out firing in the second, scoring six unanswered points before the Falcons cut the lead to five. Paly responded by ending the quarter on a 10-1 run and went into halftime with a lead of 32-18. Dawkins had 14 at the half.

Paly continued strong play in the third quarter, and the Vikings went up 36-21 off a lob to Chryst. Saratoga answered with an 8-2 run to get within double digits. However, they ended the quarter only down 10 off a last second basket.

Dawkins was the story of the fourth quarter, in which he scored 11 of his 27 points. The Falcons never got the lead under nine points, and Paly went on to win its 10th consecutive game.

Petriceks seemed happy with the overall performance of the team, although he believed the game should not have been as close.

“I think we did really well,” Petriceks said. “I mean, I think we could’ve definitely won by more. I think we were better than that team, but I think we held tight in the fourth quarter; we played really good defense. That’s what we’re just trying to work on — getting better at defense. And I think we shut them down in the fourth quarter pretty well.”

Head coach Adam Sax was pleased with Dawkin’s play and looks to improving even more in the future.

“Aubrey played really hard,” Sax said. “Aubrey did a good job driving in the lanes. He was very aggressive around the basket and he shot the ball very well — [he] rebounded on both ends. We were also very steady defensively. We just got to keep shooting the ball and sewing up our defense.”

The Vikings’ next game is at 7:45 p.m. Friday at Homestead.