When backed into a corner, everyone has a second, a friend they turn to when success seems impossible. Basketball is no exception. When playing sports the most important facet is teamwork. Although it’s a whole team, there are duos who work well together outside of the team. The boys varsity, junior varsity, freshman A and B basketball teams share who they are most coordinated with when playing.

Varsity: Torrance Green (12) and Tae Chong (11)
“Me and Tae have been locked in since he came here so we have been building our chemistry on and off the court since then,” Green said. “It’s definitely way better now, but
when I really knew that me and him had good chemistry was last year on senior night against Manor. We were just clicking the whole game with our passes, communication, etc. There was this specific play where me and Tae were trapping one of the Manor players and forced a turnover and Tae dived onto the floor to get the ball and threw it out to me and I threw a lob to Dominic and then we just hit flow state.”

Junior Varsity: David Kuester (11) and Jacob Alexander (11)
“We do good together because we hang out outside of school, it’s not like we’re friends because of basketball,” Kuester said. “We hang out all the time [and] he calls me every night. [We’ve been playing basketball together] since last year. It’s just spending time together. I play with the team at school, but I’ll play basketball with him outside of school, so it’s more experience with him. [My favorite moment with him is] over the summer [when] we would play open gym.”

Freshman A: Clifton Toney (9) and Ty’Jaylen Blanton (9)
I think that me and Clifton are the most coordinated because we’re probably two of the best players on the team,” Blanton said. “We’ve been playing with each other for a long
time [and] we’re best friends. It’s natural to us. It makes it so much easier to play with somebody like that because he’s super tall. My favorite moment with Clifton was winning district eighth grade year. We only lost one game to Cedar Valley and it was like a hard game because we didn’t help each other and didn’t have enough coordination in that game, we didn’t have enough chemistry. [We improved our coordination by] put[ing] it in the work over summer, then com[ing] back and get[ing] better every day. We’ve been playing with each other since sixth grade, so three years.”

Freshman B: Aaron Clayborne (9) and Jackson James (9)
“We’ve been playing together since sixth grade and we are very coordinated because we are always together and that’s my boy,” Clayborne said. “It’s fun because he hustles a lot. [My favorite moment was] during the summer. We beat a really good team and we both did well. It was some under armor team.”