With two minutes left in the first half, Westfield was clinging to an eight point lead. Chatham was slowly eating away at the Blue Devil lead, hitting a three-pointer and swinging the momentum to the Cougars. However, senior captain Shane Sheehan and the rest of the Blue Devils were not going to let Chatham cut the lead any further.
The Blue Devils pushed down the court with pace, getting around Chatham’s pesky defense and finding Sheehan down low on the post. Sheehan, with one quick motion, turned and tossed the ball towards the hoop. The referee blew his whistle just as the ball bounced around the rim and finally went in. “And one!” Westfield’s bench roared, signaling that the Blue Devils not only extended their lead but ripped the hearts out of the disappointed Chatham players.
The Blue Devils never looked back, commanding a double digit lead for the remainder of the game. By the end of the fourth, Westfield took home the win 81-41. Sheehan led the way with 21 points along with 14 points and 3 three-pointers from sophomore Max MacEacheron.
“We shared the ball well today and in the third quarter we came out and punched them in the mouth. After that, their ass was on the floor the rest of the game,” said Sheehan. Like Sheehan said, the Blue Devils came out very strong in the second half, going on a 9-3 run to open the quarter. Westfield’s third quarter scoring was spearheaded by three-pointers from Sheehan and aggressive drives to the basket from junior Zach Epp and sophomore Jake Russell.
On the other side of the ball, Westfield was very aggressive on defense. They came out and held Chatham to nine points in the first quarter. Head coach James McKeon said that the success on defense came from “our press that we’ve been doing. I think every time we do it we get a little bit better. [We] move fast. Came out fast. A little bit of a slow second quarter. But, that’s what we needed to do… we wanted to make sure we started fast.” The Blue Devils let up 16 points in the second quarter.
It was also their lowest scoring quarter with only 12 points. “There’s a lot of factors for that. Complacency is probably the major one. We had very high success in the first. I think that we thought it was just going to happen again,” said McKeon. “But we made it happen. And I think they understood that at halftime and we came out in the third quarter and showed it.”
Junior Tyshawn Pearson was dangerous in Chatham’s backcourt all game, picking the pocket of the Cougar’s point guard multiple times to get easy layups. Pearson was a spark plug for the Blue Devils, giving Westfield’s bench a ton of energy. Will Kirby, junior forward, said, “to be honest, when I saw my boy Ty out there cooking it motivated me to try so much harder because that’s my dog.” It was Pearson’s world, and we were all living in it. He commanded the team to a strong second half. They scored 45 points over two quarters to solidify their 40-point victory.
The Blue Devils held Chatham to 16 points in the second half, forcing the Cougars to take difficult shots or turn the ball over. Pearson said, “We played great defense today and shared the ball a lot. That got our momentum going and hopefully this carries on to states.”
Sheehan agreed: “The momentum really helps. You always want to go into states with a win like this and especially a big win.”
McKeon was especially proud of his players today for making a statement right before the state tournament.
“Chatham’s a good team. They knocked off their number one team in their county, Morris Catholic, so we knew what we were getting into. I think we played well. Confidence is always nice going into it. Having a win going in before is always good, but now it’s win or go home. We’ve got to be ready to play. We can’t have a second quarter like we did today in a state game. We’ve got to make sure we clean things up, but we played well; scoring 80 points is hard to do in high school basketball, so I’m proud of the guys,” he said.
The team also made history today. McKeon said that this is the “first time in school history ever for Westfield basketball boys that there’s been five consecutive winning seasons. The team today solidified that… That’s something for these guys and what the culture of this program is going towards, so I appreciate these guys doing it in the fashion they did today.”
Westfield hopes to carry on their success in the sectional tournament at Franklin High School on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. against Franklin.
