From Jan. 27 to Feb. 3, the Jesuit High School Sacramento varsity basketball team competed against Cosumnes Oaks High School, Franklin High School, and Elk Grove High School. 

Jesuit soundly defeated COHS in the first of their three games by a score of 77-46. Their success carried over to their next game against FHS on Feb. 1, when Jesuit defeated FHS by a score of 83-44.  

Head Coach Timothy Kelly is impressed with many individual players’ performances and feels that the team has many strong scorers. 

“We’re really fortunate because we’re so deep that we can have a different guy step up every night,” Coach Kelly said. “This has been, I wanna say, the third or fourth game in a row with four players in double figure scoring. It’s fun to watch different players step up and have depth.”

After playing COHS, Jesuit beat EGHS by a score of 83-33, with the fourth quarter being played with a running clock due to the significant lead the Marauders had built up.   

McDonald’s All-American Andrej Stojakovic ’23 points to the mindset of the team and how it set them up to give the effort necessary to take the wins.

“We knew that we were the more talented team, and all we had to do was come out and take care of business and play harder,” Andrej said. 

Speaking about his return after missing time with an injury, Andrej credits the team’s continued success to the preparation they went through days before. 

“The couple practices we had during the week were good for us and we got to build some chemistry back up,” Andrej said. “[The practices] prepared us really well and got us to where we are today.”

With Andrej’s return, the team seems to be competing better than ever. Forward Cole Epperson ’24 expressed his excitement with the return of Andrej and why he is such an important part of the team.

“I think it’s definitely better with him back just because we’re all playing with each other so now having him along with our full team is going to help us win,” Cole said. 

From Feb. 6 to Feb. 8, Jesuit faced off against Pleasant Grove High School and Sheldon High School, with the former being on the momentous Senior Night. The Marauders won both contests, with PGHS losing by a score of 73-33 and SHS losing by a score of 71-59. 

Even with the Marauders in the win column, Coach Kelly stresses the importance of improvement across the board in order to achieve further success moving forward. 

“I mean, we definitely need to get better,” Coach Kelly said. “We want to focus on winning the league championship first and then start eyeballing for playoffs, but it’s all about continuing to get better.”

As the season nears the playoffs, the Marauders aim to keep their winning streak going as they begin to wrap up the regular season. Jesuit will play Davis High School on Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 7:30 p.m. Show up and show out as our Marauders push toward playoffs.