JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – While shorthanded, Trinity Christian dropped its home-opener to Global Outreach Charter Academy, 61-52, Tuesday night in Jacksonville. Global Outreach won their first game of the season.
GOCA’s victory could catapult guards Josue Rivera and Jason Martinez into the Jacksonville spotlight, after combining for 38 points en route to a Kodiak victory. The Kodiaks are only in their third basketball season in school history, but it hasn’t taken long for them to get it figured out on the court.
The Conquerors (0-1) are still hindered a bit, as a few key pieces of their team remain on the football team during their state playoff run, but turnovers were Trinity’s demise on Tuesday.
Trinity sustained an early lead throughout the majority of the first half with the help of a couple of 3-pointers from Mekhi Burton and Josh Robinson, but with three minutes to go in the first half, the Kodiaks (1-1) took the lead and didn’t return it.
Both teams traded runs for much of the second half, the Conquerors clawed their way back to within three points, but glass domination from Deshawn Citizen — who totaled 12 rebounds on the night — to go along with timely layups from Justin Ambrosiani and Camilo Sanchez, ultimately put the game on ice.
Head coach of the Kodiaks, Jerrod Tucker, was ‘extremely proud’ of his squad for earning its first win of the season.
“Our defense was key tonight. We were able to get stops at key times and we made some great plays in transition,” Tucker said. “We need to clean up our execution and (reduce) turnovers. I think if we can cut our turnovers we have the ability to play with anyone.”
Tucker also expounded on his two-headed monster in Martinez and Rivera.
“Sway (Rivera) is the calm leader that makes us go. Jason is a winner! He makes the plays that we need in order to win. They mean everything to our team and without them we don’t win.”
Martinez and Rivera both said Tuesday nights win felt ‘great.’
“We had to come back from a tough loss in that first game, come together, leave that all behind and get this dub,” Martinez said with a grin.
“It means a lot to us and this program. We’re building things little by little. We started off a little bit rocky but we came out here and executed – got the job done,” Rivera said. “We just got to keep working and we’ll get to where we want to be.”
Rivera led the team in scoring with 21 points, but Martinez (17), Sanchez (7), Ambrosiani (6), Blake Latta (4), Mikiyel Richards (3), Citizen (2) and Alex Dumesle (2) all contributed to the score count.
