Menlo’s varsity girls basketball team fell to Menlo-Atherton 41-37 on Thursday, Dec. 21 at home. The Knights initiated the scoring as the teams went back and forth throughout the first half, though the Bears had the lead 22-17 at halftime. The Bears pulled away in the third quarter with a 37-26 lead. However, the Knights did not give up. A trio of threes from freshmen Ava Allen and Sophia Longinidis and junior Ruiqi Liu brought the score within four with 13.9 seconds remaining in the game. Allen and Liu both contributed eight points, while Allen had five steals and Liu had seven rebounds. Despite an 11-4 run in the fourth quarter, the Knights were unable to pull ahead and the Bears proved victorious.
Senior Arthi Abhyanker led the Knights in scoring with 13 points and six rebounds. Abhyanker believes the Knights brought a lot of energy into the game but the end result didn’t turn out in their favor. “We had a strong win against Fremont on Tuesday and we carried the same energy into this game. There was a lot of excitement because it was our first home game and it was against a rival,” she said. According to Abhyanker, the team needs to work on getting back on defense and playing more loosely.
Junior Karen Xin is fired up from this game and looking forward to hopefully winning their league matches coming up in the New Year. “We could have cleaned up a lot of things and we’re going to clean up a lot of things going forward,” Xin said.
