The Bears -- who snapped a two game winning streak -- could not overcome a crisp Vikings offense which pulled out to a 38-24 halftime lead.

"I thought we made some huge strides on offense," said Vikings head coach Peter Diepenbrock. "This was by far our best offensive effort of the year."

The Bears managed a 10-9 lead over the Vikings after going on a 6-0 run that ended with three minutes left in the first quarter.

But things quickly slipped away from the Bears as the Vikings took advantage of steals to close out the first quarter on a 13-4 run.

The first quarter ended with a 22-14 score.

The Vikings guards, notably Jon Whetstone and Aaron Wilson as well as forward Paul Scifres, shut down the Bears point guards and made it very difficult for the Bears to run their offensive plays.

The second quarter brought no relief for Menlo-Atherton (2-3), who tried a full-court press to cool Paly's offensive heels.

It didn't work.

The Vikings managed to find the open players to score easily.

Palo Alto (4-3) jumped to a 37-20 lead with a minute left in the half, before closing out the second quarter.

"We responded well in the second half," said Bears coach Marc Cadet.

"Paly is a good, solid team and we're OK, but we're not a team that can come back from 17 points."

Bears six foot-seven center Tyler Velten finally found his groove in the fourth quarter, when the Bears managed to find a way to feed him the ball under the basket. He scored 14 of his 16 points in the last quarter.

Reich finished with a game high 23 points, while the Bears' wily Kirk Washington finished with 20 points including a three-pointer that came late in the fourth quarter.

"This is a young team and I think this game opened some eyes," said Diepenbrock. "We got a picture of how good we can be and its raised our expectations."

Menlo-Atherton's two game winning streak coming into yesterday's game came off a 63-59 win over Gunderson and a 58-55 win over Gunn.