Marcus Madoski scored a game-high 29 points to help the Ripon Indians beat the River Islands Riptide 62-54 Friday night in non-league play.

The game was a homecoming of sorts for River Islands athletic director and head coach Justin Graham, who starred for Ripon as a player before returning to coach the team after playing professional basketball overseas.

Graham’s first-year varsity squad looked up for the challenge early on, as they jumped out quickly to a 7-0 start less than four minutes into the game.

“I feel good about the game plan we had going into tonight. Give credit to Ripon, they did a lot of good things to counter what we put together,” said Graham.

The counter came immediately from Madoski and the Indians in the form of a 29-12 stretch to end the half up, 29-19. During the run, Madoski himself outscored River Islands as a team 12-7 in the second quarter, while racking up five of his team-high nine rebounds.

“Marcus can get to the rack really well, and teams are keying on him. We’ve got to move the ball around to free him up to become more effective, and I thought we did a really good job of that tonight,” Balcao said.

Most of that ball movement ran through senior point guard Logan Lefebvre, who ended the game with 14 points and six rebounds while tallying four steals on the defensive end.

Graham’s Riptide have their own scorer in junior guard Idrees ElFarra, who came into the game averaging 17 points. The crafty captain scored a team-high 24 points to go along with seven rebounds.

“Idrees is our captain for a reason,” Graham said. “Not only is his on-court play impressive, but the way he leads this team and carries himself off the court is even better.”

Junior guard Charles Mapanao also did a lot of the heavy lifting on offense for the Riptide, scoring 12 points on four of his team’s nine 3-pointers made. The sharpshooting from Mapanao helped River Islands scored 25 of its 54 points in the fourth quarter.

“The message to the team was let’s play hard until the buzzer goes off, pedal to the metal, and I feel like we did that,” Graham said.

For Balcao, the story was the defensive intensity his team displayed.

“We played really good defense for three quarters,” he said. “Anytime you can hold the other team to less than 10 points a quarter, you’re going to be in a good place.”

Both teams will play next on Tuesday.

For Ripon, a trip to Orestimba in Trans-Valley League action. Meanwhile, River Islands will host Turlock Christian in its first-ever Central California Athletic Alliance League game.

Junior Varsity

Ripon 71, River Islands 35

The Indians led 40-16 at half. Ripon was led by Veer Dhaliwal, who scored 20 points. Sam Stewart scored 14 points, 12 of them coming on made 3-pointers.

Matt Echivarre and Jazen Buenvia led River Islands in scoring with six points each.