A win on the road started out the week for Escalon’s junior varsity basketball boys and they also closed out the week on a winning note at the Johansen Tournament.

Head coach Brandon Hoover said his team was at Amador for a non-league game on Dec. 11 and earned a 78-54 victory.

“We shot the ball very well,” he noted. “Russell Weinbrecht had 31 points, Logan Webster had 19 and Demetrius Teixeira had 11.”

Defensively, the JV Cougars got a strong effort from Ty Harris and the team enjoyed a comfortable lead throughout the majority of the contest.

Thursday through Saturday, the team was on the road again, this time traveling to nearby Modesto for the Johansen Tournament.

“We opened up against Johansen on Thursday and we were pretty evenly matched,” Hoover said.

However, the game went down as a 55-50 loss for the Cougars.

“They hit a couple of big shots down the stretch,” Hoover explained.

Webster had 21 points for Escalon in the loss, Harris added 20.

Friday night against Enochs, it was a lopsided 78-26 loss.

“Obviously the game got away from us early,” admitted Hoover. “We got outcoached and outplayed, it was a very humbling loss.”

Harris had 10 points and Tyler Bashaw chipped in with eight.

“On Saturday, I was really proud of the kids, we beat Jim Elliot 66-53, we bounced back,” Hoover said.

Instead of feeling sorry for themselves after the thumping on Friday, the team regrouped and came out with the solid effort to salvage one win out of the tournament.

Weinbrecht poured in 33 points, including connecting on six 3’s in the first half. Webster had 18 points, Harris had 10.

“He was assigned to their best player and did a nice job on defense,” Hoover added of Harris. “That puts us at 2-2 for the week and we are 7-4 now.”

The squad was scheduled to play a couple of final non-league games early this week before opening up Trans-Valley League play hosting Riverbank in a 6 p.m. contest on Friday, Dec. 21.