"I knew we'd win," said Galdo, a 5-11, 150-pound senior wing guard. Oh, and at times a point forward. "That wasn't going to be a problem."
His confidence could be traced to two variables: The teams also had played a preseason game, won by Rush, and CAPA lined up for this one without its leading scorer, Mike Lauer (ankle injury).
Rush won, 57-31. Shortly after the final buzzer, manager Pertrise Harris looked at the scoreboard and yelped, "We actually won a game! We beat our record from last year!"
Harris is quite the go-getter. To make the Knights' final home game special, she combed the hallways all day (Rush also is performing arts-themed) and coaxed one student, Madison Mitchell, into singing the national anthem (wonderful rendition!) and three others into performing a halftime dance routine.
If asked, Galdo probably would have put down a heavy beat during breaks in the action.
"Music, that's my life. And I love playing the drums," he said. "Anytime I'm upset about something, I go straight to music. I got into playing the drums after watching 'Drumline' many, many, I don't even know how many times.
"I play drums in the school orchestra, and I used to play in a group that traveled around to different places, mostly along Broad Street. We played in Love Park, the School District building . . . Any kind of music, I'll play the drums to it. Well, except techno."
Technically, as you might imagine, this game was hardly a classic.
Twice, there were sequences of maybe 10 seconds that featured four turnovers. On a drive straight down the lane, a CAPA player lofted a flip shot and the ball cleared the backboard. There were numerous other nowhere-close shots.
