The George Washington High School Geckos shook off a sluggish first half and overwhelmed the Notre Dame High School Royals 73-51 in the Guam Basketball Confederation-Guam DOE ISA High School Boys Basketball League on Friday at GW.<\/p>\n
The Royals, which finished the regular season at 5-6 to the Geckos’ 9-2, simply outplayed the Geckos in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Kai Flores, Jacob Gaje and Kaleb Benavente each hit 3-pointers, and Mateo Anderson and Gabe Duenas combined for 10 points as the Royals led 19-13 at the end of the first quarter.<\/p>\n
“We let them play to our pace, slowed the game down a little bit and then we just went off of what they gave us,” said ND coach Vince Sablan.<\/p>\n
The Royals defense slowed down in the second quarter, resulting in sloppy fouls. The Geckos hit just six shots in that quarter, but made up for it by hitting 9 of 14 free throws while outscoring ND 21-14, and taking a 34-33 lead into halftime.<\/p>\n
Jaydin Martinez said that the Gecko coach gave a halftime talk that fired up the team. Sakisan Orichiro stepped up his defense and turned playmaker for GW, dishing dimes to his brother Kairos Orichiro as well as a couple to big man Darnell Camacho. Camacho and big man teammate Genesis Babauta patrolled the paint, leaving few chances for the Royals to grab rebounds.<\/p>\n
The Geckos stomped on the gas pedal for a flurry of points, boosted by a defense that created turnovers and instant offense.<\/p>\n
GW outscored ND 22-9 in the third quarter, building a 59-43 lead and never looked back. Guards Jace Cruz, Martinez and Peter Aguon maintained the game speed and shared the ball well, giving the second-stringers more playing time than usual.<\/p>\n
Kairos Orichiro scored eight points in the third quarter to complement his two steals.<\/p>\n
“He really, really wants the title,” said his brother Sakisan Orichiro.<\/p>\n
Overall, GW clamped down on the Royals’ attempts to score down low, forcing low-percentage outside shots.<\/p>\n
Martinez said it felt like a blessing to have both Camacho and Babauta on the court, and said they were the best 1-2 big man punch in the league.<\/p>\n
With the John F. Kennedy High School Islanders ahead, the Geckos are looking to bounce back from a regular season loss. Martinez said that they will come to practice with intensity, then bring that same intensity to the semifinal contest.<\/p>\n
The loss ends the Royals season but does not send them back to the drawing board. Coach Sablan said that while he loses five seniors – two of them affiliates – he has a team of mostly sophomores, including Nathan Esteves, one of two sophomores league-wide at All-Island selections last week. Esteves made Honorable Mention while Brez Cornelius from Saint Paul Christian School was voted to the All-Island 2nd Team.<\/p>\n
“Next year, everyone is going to be in the rebuilding year,” Sablan said. “But we will be the same team.”<\/p>\n
Camacho led GW with 20 points, including 6-of-8 from the free throw line. Cruz had 12 and Kairos Orichiro had 10 for the Geckos. Gabe Duenas scored 16 for the Royals, while Flores had 14, including three 3-pointers. Nate Esteves scored eight.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.postguam.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The George Washington High School Geckos shook off a sluggish first half and overwhelmed the Notre Dame High School Royals 73-51 in the Guam Basketball Confederation-Guam DOE ISA High School Boys Basketball League on Friday at GW. The Royals, which finished the regular season at 5-6 to the Geckos’ 9-2, simply outplayed the Geckos in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2318102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[449164,22485,380665,21848,449165],"class_list":["post-2318101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-ball-games","tag-basketball","tag-men","tag-sports","tag-team-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Geckos-recover-from-opening-flurry-to-beat-Royals-73-51.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2318101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2318103,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318101\/revisions\/2318103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2318102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2318101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2318101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2318101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}