Published: February 20, 2008 11:48 pm            

Westfield pulls away from Taylor

WESTFIELD — With less than 30 seconds left in the game, 6-foot-5 Westfield forward Jordan Meinen found himself all alone in transition with the rim begging to be dunked on. He went to gather in a long outlet pass and … fumbled the ball out of bounds.

It was about the only thing that went wrong for the Shamrocks Wednesday night as they beat Taylor 61-47.

Taylor struck first with a 3-pointer by Reomey Northington on the Titans’ first possession, but Westfield quickly established an advantage, scoring close to the hoop on cuts and post opportunities. Westfield led 11-8 at the end of one quarter. Taylor tied the game at 11-11 in the second but Westfield (5-15) quickly re-took the lead and was ahead on the scoreboard for the rest of the game.

Asked where the game got away, Taylor coach Jeff Fisher said “I’m not sure we were ever in it.”

“We weren’t cutting, we weren’t screening, we weren’t blocking out,” Fisher said. “We just didn’t take responsibility for the game.”

Taylor hit just 15 of 49 shots from the field in falling to 11-7 on the season.

“I didn’t think we made the defense work,” Fisher said. “That was a key. You’ve got to make the defense work and they didn’t have to work.”

On the other side, Westfield did what it wanted on offense — especially after hafltime. The Shamrocks hit just 8 of 19 shots in the first half while snagging a slim 21-18 advantage. In the third quarter, Westfield went to work executing a plan to get scores from close to the hoop.

Forward Jeff Howard scored on two post buckets, a cut and a drive and burly guard Adam Albright scored four physical buckets in the paint to help Westfield take a 43-30 lead through three quarters. Combined, Albright and Howard hit 8 of 9 shots in the third quarter.

“We talked about that specifically at halftime,” Westfield coach Joe Pearson said. “There’s two or three things that we can do — we’ve been doing since last June and summer leagues. We specifically talked about that [going inside] and one other thing. And we never got to the other thing, [because] the first thing was working.”

Westfield hit 10 of 16 shots in the third quarter to push the lead into double digits with quick, effective offense.

“Boom, boom, boom. That’s it. They do what they want and we don’t make them do something they don’t want to do,” Fisher said of the third quarter.

Meinen ended the third with his second trey of the stanza to push the Westfield lead to 43-30.

Taylor mounted a few hopeful charges late, but never got close. Taylor cut the margin to eight points at 43-35 early in the fourth quarter after a five-point flurry by Tyler Gotshall, Drake Herr and Seth Vautaw, but that was the last time the Titans cut the lead to single digits.

“Give Westfield credit, they played their game and they made us react,” Fisher said noting the Titans didn’t get much from their press. “We sure didn’t make them react much.”

Gotshall scored 19 points including 14 after halftime, but the Titans got little else after the break as six other players combined for just 13 points in the second half. Drake Herr was second on the squad with seven points, Vautaw scored six and Cory Herr five. Cory Herr had a team-high seven rebounds against the bigger Shamrocks.

“We were strong enough to keep their big men out and their little guard [Northington], when he did penetrate, he didn’t score a lot of points so that helped us,” Pearson said.

Albright, a junior, led Westfield with 16 points while forward Jeff Howard, a sophomore, was second with 13. Both drew praise from Pearson, who has just one senior on his squad. Meinen added 11 and forward Zach Mally scored 10.

Westfield started four players 6-2 or taller and won the rebounding battle 34-26. Albright grabbed a game-high eight while Meinen took seven.

        

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