The Chabot men's basketball team has much to be grateful for after a successful 2021-2022 season.

Head coach Keenan McMiller earned his first playoff win at the college and achieved a career-high season victory total of 18 at Chabot.

Additionally, the talented Gladiators excelled off the court in their drive to land with four-year programs.

Consider the following:

1) Team GPA 3.33, led by Jaiden Rivera's 4.0.

2) 4 sophomores will be graduating this spring with A.A. degrees.

3) 4 sophomores will receive athletic scholarships.

Chabot, which finished with an 18-11 overall record, opened the CCCAA Regional Playoffs with a rousing 92-69 home win over Folsom Lake on March 1. Then, after a very quick turnaround, Chabot fell to No. 2 seed West Valley 81-64 loss in Round 2 on March 3, ending the Gladiators' season.

"I'm looking at the season from three different angles," McMiller said. "One, just to play again after everything with COVID; two, actually completing a season after COVID; and three, all the hurdles and barriers that we broke down having to go through playing a COVID season and still were able to weather a lot of things and make it a productive year."

Against Folsom Lake, Chabot zoomed to victory after trailing in the first half. Jaiden Rivera amassed a game-high 29 points. Isaiah Saams Hoy had 19 points and 10 rebounds. Diggy Winbush did a little bit of everything, with 17 points, six assists, five rebounds, and five steals. Isaiah Veal had 15 points and seven rebounds.

Veal and David Ogunleye were both first-team All-Coast-North Conferece selections.

Consider the season another building block in McMiller's fast-emerging program. McMiller has an overall mark of 46-40 with three playoff appearances over three seasons at Chabot, with a fourth season canceled due to the virus.

Still, the West Valley game was a tough assignment on the road for the competitive Gladiators.

"It was great to get my first playoff win (over Folsom Lake), but then to play a day and a half later, it's tough," McMiller added. "We really matched up well with West Valley."

McMiller and West Valley coach Danny Yoshikawa go back a long ways in the college game. The two teams' players also knew each other well, having faced off in scrimmages over the summer and fall.

"I just really appreciate him," McMiller said of Yoshikawa. "He even sent a text, I've never had a coach say this after a game: 'You know what, man, you guys pretty much outplayed us the whole game.' … Obviously they won, but for him to even say that it means a lot. He didn't have to do that."

Chabot was only suiting up eight players, which made the quick turnaround in Round 2 even more challenging. Even still, Chabot did not take a backward step against a vaunted opponent coming off a bye.

"The way we started off the game, we dominated the first half and ended up giving up our lead," McMiller recalled. "We had a nine-point lead with a couple minutes left (in the half), and they came back. We made some mistakes and they came back."

Chabot rebounded from a three-point halftime deficit to retake the lead, but couldn't maintain it.

"We played well. We didn't shoot well, but we played well," McMiller, known as a defensive coach, said. "We played good defense, we made the extra pass. Guys were aggressive."

Looking ahead, McMiller plans to recruit a few more outside shooters. He says the top seeds in the state have at least seven guys who can shoot the three-ball 35 percent or better.

Clearly, Chabot seems poised for another positive step in 2022-2023. Stay tuned ...