Almost.
Westfield almost upset Linden. Almost conquered a budding giant. Almost stamped a turbulent season with a monumental landmark.
But not quite.
The Blue Devils, after leading narrowly at halftime, slipped in the third quarter en route to a 54–46 loss. Westfield dropped to 4-4 on the season (0-4 in UCC Watchung). Linden, ranked 13th in New Jersey by nj.com, solidified its conference supremacy by improving to 7-1 (4-0 in UCC Watchung).
“We’ve got to finish out games,” head coach James McKeon said. He added, “We gotta find a way. These are the learning curves of playing basketball in a tough conference.”
Westfield led 24–22 at halftime, posing as the vigorous underdog confronting a highly regarded foe. The Westfield bench, in a gym crammed with Linden fans, flared, a small pocket of intensity. Hair askew and cheeks flushed, the Blue Devils fought to take the halftime lead.
Then came the third quarter. Linden opened it on a 6-0 run and closed it on a 9-0 run. The quarter ended with Linden leading by 9 points. That barrier proved unassailable, and the Blue Devils lost.
“In the third quarter,” Theo Sica said, “we started to play Linden basketball. Just fast-paced. It’s not what we prepare for, and not what we want to do. And we just kind of handed it to them.”
The recipe for basketball upsets nearly always involves one player catching fire. Westfield applied that formula Tuesday in its upset bid. Big man Shane Sheehan comprised the majority of Westfield’s offense, scoring 25 points and gathering 10 rebounds.
He was the constant target, the prism through which Westfield refracted its offense.
“He carried us for a long time, and we look to him for that,” McKeon said. “So that’s not new for us. This is our expectation, and he’s just meeting that.” Sica also mentioned that Linden is guard-heavy (indeed: Sheehan was the tallest player on the court), so the Blue Devils tried to exploit that advantage.
Sheehan was a bit more succinct. “They kept giving it to me,” he said, “and it kept working.”
Of Sheehan’s 25 points, 15 arrived in the first half. He and Sica, who finished with 7 points and 5 assists, accounted for all of Westfield’s first-half scoring until Zach Epp drilled a 3-pointer with just over a minute to play in the first half. Epp totaled 11 points, sinking back-to-back threes to ventilate the fading Blue Devils midway through the third quarter.
Those three—Sheehan, Epp, Sica—were the only Westfield players to surpass 2 points on the night. Games against top teams expose flaws, and Westfield’s reliance on a few players perhaps highlighted a lack of depth.
Still, “[We] definitely played much better than we have,” McKeon said.
It was a night for basketball at Linden High School.
Linden’s army of cheerleaders generated a relentless rhythm, their synchronized yells and movements and stand-rattlings infusing the game with an extra jolt of vitality. “Let’s go Linden” chants poured from a corner of the gym. A female Linden fan perched near the top of the stands crowed a grating refrain after every Westfield foul: “You can’t dooooo that.”
Before the game, Linden conducted its player introductions with a touch of theatrics. The lights dimmed. And, later, during the third quarter, Westfield’s prospects of victory followed suit.
The Blue Devils’ next opportunity to grab their first conference victory will come Thursday, at Plainfield at 7 p.m. Westfield will use the intervening time trying to build on the positive aspects of this performance.
“Linden is notorious for being a good basketball team,” McKeon said. He added, “We want the challenge. We know we [were] on a nice 3-0 run, but coming back to Union County basketball is different than playing anywhere else.”
Westfield was served a rude reminder of that on the first play of the second quarter.
Linden’s Elijah Motley lofted the ball toward the rim. Teammate Idris Muhammad appeared as if from nowhere, floating down the baseline to meet the ball at its apex. The scene froze for a second, Muhammad poised above the rim. Ball in one hand. Players watching from below.
Then he threw it down, and the gym erupted. Just one member of the Linden orchestra, delighting the crowd with another symphony.
