Down by 10, midway through the third quarter, Westfield was looking for something to get them back into the game after giving up consecutive three-pointers to Linden. Junior Tyshawn Pearson dribbled down the court, scanning the defense, searching for a way to get around the defenders and score an easy bucket. Instead of driving to the basket, Pearson kicked the ball out to sophomore Jake Russell who was sitting in the corner, waiting to shoot. However, a Linden defender closed in fast, forcing Russell to dish the ball to senior captain Shane Sheehan on the post. Sheehan brushed a defender off and went up, slamming a dunk right in the face of the Linden center.
Though Sheehan’s elite dunk gave the Blue Devils some momentum in the third quarter, his efforts were not enough as Westfield ended up on the losing side of the game.
The Blue Devils’ 56-67 loss to Linden brought the matchup to 0-2 in the Tigers’ favor. The game was defined by Linden’s strong shooting and a lot of fast break action. Head coach James McKeon said that when the game is so fast-paced, his team has to “play under control. I know it might look fast [but] as long as we’re controlled, we want to play up tempo…There’s fast and controlled, and that’s two different things. The part of the game that hurt us was their two best players being open, wide open at times.”
The first score of the game was a made 3-pointer from Linden, a sign of what was to come. Westfield managed to remain even with them for the first few minutes, then the Tigers busted out a 10-0 run which was ended by 2 made free throws from junior Tyshawn Pearson, bringing the score to 8-16. A layup in traffic from junior Farid Habayeb ended the quarter with Westfield down 10-18.
The second quarter yielded better results for the Blue Devils. They outscored Linden 21-15. The team was led in this period by 8 points from Sheehan and 7 from junior Zach Epp; the two were Westfield’s leading scorers on the night with 20 and 14 points, respectively.
McKeon said that they have success like in the second quarter when they “share the basketball. And when we share the basketball, we’re pretty good. I think if we look at assists in those quarters, they’re much higher than the quarters where we don’t have that kind of success.”
The Tiger defense was strong throughout the game. Much taller than most of the players on Westfield, Linden was able to get a hand on a lot of Blue Devil shot attempts. Nevertheless, McKeon was happy with his team’s offensive play. “[Linden is] athletic. I think we played well offensively, we scored 50 plus points,” he said. “They’re gonna block shots. It’s basketball. Can we make an extra pass here or there? For sure. But I think we did well offensively.”
Despite the strong scoring quarter, Westfield still entered halftime down 2 points at 31-33. Then Linden got hot. One jumpshot after another went in. They could not miss. A 10-4 Linden run to start the third quarter brought their lead once again up to 8 points. When playing a strong shooting team, McKeon tells his guys, “Try your best. We can’t leave them with uncontested shots, and I think that’s [on] us… it’s not a lack of effort. It’s kind of getting lost in space… we shouldn’t have their two best players have open jump shots like that. So it’s probably a defensive [lapse], if you will. It’s something we talked about, and we knew if we left them open, they’re gonna hit shots.”
“Linden played at their own pace and ran the floor in transition, but we weren’t able to find their best players in transition and let them get some easy shots,” said Pearson.
Westfield fought back in the second quarter, but ending the third down 43-54 did not bode well for the outcome of the game. “They went on a spurt of four consecutive threes, maybe three in a row, and it’s hard to climb back twice against a top 20 team in the state; we did it once. To do it again in one game is tough,” said McKeon.
The Blue Devils went into the fourth quarter down 11 points, a commanding lead for a very solid Linden team. Westfield was able to close the lead to eight halfway through the quarter but the Tigers went on the offensive, scoring a layup and the foul, stealing all of the momentum and putting the game out of reach for the Blue Devils.
“We gotta focus on controlling what we can control and block out the outside noise. We have to shoot better and Linden did that better than us tonight,” said Sheehan.
The Blue Devils will take on Summit on Saturday at 12:30 for Senior Day as they look to get back into the win column and improve to a 6-7 record.
