The basketball team hopes to keep working its way towards playoffs even while dealing with injuries.

Junior Joseph Powell, senior Hayden Souza and freshman Sean Rodriguez have all been out for some part of January due to injuries and sickness.

Senior Aidan Davison said it is good that Powell’s ankle injury only caused him to sit out for a week because he is a tough player to play without.

Coach Chris Lavdiotis said that senior Andy Slabaugh has filled Powell’s spot nicely while he’s been injured.

“It’s a coach’s job to prepare every player to be ready to come off the bench at any time,” Lavdiotis said.

He also said that Souza is a necessary player in the lineup because he has a lot of energy and brings life to the team.

The team only has league games left to play and is currently 12-7 overall.

“In order to make playoffs, we need to win all of our home games and bring our ‘A game’ every time,” Powell said.

Over finals week, the team had no games and shortened practices which allowed them to get some rest and get healthy before the upcoming busy schedule.

Davison said that he hopes to make it to Nor Cal which means winning at least two NCS games.

This year the team has larger players than it had in several years which adds to their success in rebounding and post scoring.

Powell said they often win games when they out-rebound the other team and get the ball to the post where a big man can put it up.

In the team’s upcoming schedule of 10 games, three of them are very tough teams, said Powell and Lavdiotis: O’Dowd, Castro Valley and San Leandro.

Over winter break, the team won second place at a tournament in Davis and second place at San Diego.

“We were playing great as a team until the last game”, Davison said.

Senior Adam Wuebbens has dunked several times in games last couple of weeks. Many of the players also said that junior Chad Brame is likely to dunk in the near future.