While students were away from Oviedo High School over winter break, the Oviedo Boys Basketball team was given the opportunity to play in the Tampa Bay Christmas Invitational, a selective nationally recognized event. With the opportunity to improve and bring some hardware home in the tournament, the team started with one objective.
“Our goal was to win the whole thing,” senior guard Conner Collins said.
At the same time, the tournament brought a new challenge to the Lions that they had yet to face this year: the variety of opponents. With the tournament bringing the Lions into games with teams from as far away as Illinois, they faced various opponents and styles, but they did not let it dictate their play.
“We never focused on the other team. Our main focus was doing what we do and making the opponent adjust to us,” head coach Ian Young said.
This focus on themselves allowed the Lions to play to their own strengths throughout the tournament and helped keep the players comfortable.
“I got to what I’m good at being my mid-range shot and that kind of just set me up for better shots farther into the game,” senior forward Aidan Demeglio said.
Though the Lions focused on playing to their strengths on the offensive end, their main focus was on controlling the game on both ends of the floor. A key part of succeeding in all facets of the game was outworking and outhustling opponents.
“Our energy was one of the biggest things we focused on,” Demeglio said.
The team knew that over the course of the tournament, they would have some games where the offense was humming and others where they struggled to simply put the ball in the basket. So to find consistent success in the tournament, the Lions relied on the philosophy that ‘defense wins championships. ’
“We always fall back on our defense. Like I tell the guys, there are going to be nights when shots don’t fall; That’s just basketball. But defense always travels when you bring energy and effort,” Young said.
This focus on defense and hustle helped the team go undefeated in the tournament and their victory has supplied the team with a new conviction in their identity as a team that can win in a variety of ways.
“It gives us confidence in ourselves that we did what we thought we should do and go out, win the tournament which can help propel us into the second half of the season,” said Collins.
With many games with playoff implications on the horizon for the Lions now is the perfect time to get hot, and the tournament format of the Invitational will help prepare the team for their goal to find success in the playoffs.
“It gives us confidence knowing we can play multiple tough opponents in a short period of time. It’s very similar to a state playoff setting,” said Young.
With their undefeated status in the tournament keeping the winning streak they started in a 72-61 victory over Hagerty in early December, the team hopes to carry that momentum through to the end of the season.
“It puts us on the right track, we are on a 6 game win streak we wanna keep that streak all the way down to the final stretch,” said Demeglio.
