by Asher Hirt ’25
The USN basketball team has been a fan favorite for years. Students show out and deliver their spirit more at basketball games than any other sport.
The season opener at home against Antioch proved a tough match for the Tigers. On the offensive side, Antioch had an absolute field day shooting with high percentages and efficiency. On the defensive side they held strong, with a man to man defense, not letting the Tigers drive into the paint for an easy basket. Clay Payne ‘25, a standout performer from last year who led the team in points, did not score a single point in the entire first half. The Tigers were forced to shoot a massive amount of threes and could not get them in the basket. The Tigers ended up losing that game 52-62 leaving them with their first loss of the season.
Players like Nicholas Spiegel ‘25 were confident going into their second game against Hume-Fogg on November 17. The Tigers played efficient basketball on the offensive side: effective transitions, passing the ball around for good looks, and drawing fouls to get to the line.
Mahoney Daunic ‘24 stated, “In transition, we do a good job, getting the ball down the floor and pushing it and getting points in transition.” The Tigers have a lot of fast paced players that can get down the court and catch the defense off guard for transition points.
However, on the defensive side, the Tigers were outmatched.
“The Hume-Fogg guards kept posting up our guards,” Payne said.
Due to the difference in height between Hume-Fogg and USN, it proved an effective strategy for Hume-Fogg to get points in the paint. It was an intense battle back and fourth down to the last seconds of the fourth quarter. The Tigers were down by three points with 10 seconds left. Braylin Davis ‘26 ended up finding Amaan Anderson ‘25 wide open and he hit a clutch three to send the game to overtime. In overtime, the Tigers let up too many easy baskets with sloppy defense and ended up losing the game by a point.
Despite the slow start with close losses to Antioch and Hume-Fogg, the team has started to get wins rolling and is building up momentum with wins against MTCS and Davidson Academy. The Tigers scored 72 points to Davidson’s 55 on November 21. Against MTCS, the Tigers dominated with a 78-22 win on November 28. The Tigers also ended up losing by just one point to a strong Webb team 52-53 on December 1.
These early games provided insight to the team on what they need to improve on heading into the second half of the season. Daunic thinks that it is necessary to build on these past couple games in order to have a successful season.
Daunic emphasized how one major takeaway is that the team needs to drive into the paint more.
“When you drive, the defense collapses on the driver and then you can kick it out to a shooter or you can look to Clay or Hamilton who are usually down low. And that can really open up the offensive looks for us,” Daunic said.
While this will open up the court and give us better looks, the Tigers have been shooting 32.2 % from the 3 point line. With a team that relies heavily on shooting threes, they need to pick this up in order to win more games.
“We haven’t knocked out a super high percentage yet,” Daunic said, “but I think that’s going to turn around. We got a lot of guys that are feeling good about how they’re shooting.”
After a stretch of tough games including holiday tournaments, the Tigers will look to continue to improve where they can in January as they look to Homecoming and postseason play.
