The Manual boy’s basketball team carved out a narrow victory last night during the homecoming game against the Central Yellowjackets, 77-72.

Before the game, the duPont Manual 2017 basketball homecoming royalty were announced. The prince and princess winners were Patrick Harper (9, J&C) and Edison Pleasants (10, HSU), and the king and queen were Grayson Smith (12, J&C) and Gia Combs (12, HSU).

Manual started the game with an early lead. William Britt (#3, 12) was hot during the first quarter and knocked down a few buckets. The Crimsons steadily kept a ten-point lead over the Yellowjackets for most of the half. At halftime, the score was 45-35, in Manual’s favor.

At the beginning of the second half, Central came out much more aggressive, and slowly began to close the gap between the teams’ scores.

During the fourth quarter, Central’s intense playing and ball movement allowed them to score multiple times in rapid succession, and they soon tied the game, 65-65.

“We did excellent on the defense, caused a lot of turnovers, so I thought we left it on the floor,” Myke Romaine, head coach of the Central Yellowjackets, said.

Despite their effort, Central couldn’t break through Manual’s fantastic defense, and the Crimsons soon regained the ground they had earlier lost. By the end of the game, the Crimsons managed to come back from the nail-biter, winning 77-72.

“We knew we had a good team coming in, we played them earlier in the year and didn’t play too well, so we had to pick up on the defensive end, and it really showed tonight,” Britt said.

“We’re playing at a higher level than we were playing earlier in the year,” Jimmy Just, the head coach of the Crimsons, said. “But we’ve still got room for improvement, we’ve got a lot of room to fix some of our mistakes.”

Be sure to show up to the next game for the Crimsons, an away game against Atherton on Tuesday, February 7 at 5:45 p.m.