Up by just six points at halftime, boys basketball was locked in a tense battle with Mt Carmel, Jan. 9. Every possession mattered, and every mistake weighed on the game, according to forward Caleb Hardy (12). Then, midway through the third quarter, Westview’s defense tightened, and the offense scored shots successfully. Suddenly, the lead reached double digits. The energy in the Westview gym was electric—from the stands to the cheerleaders. Hand signals were used on court because of the overwhelming cheers of encouragement.
The third quarter turning point secured a win for the Wolverines with a final score of 62-39, solidifying their place as third in D-II Palomar league.
“There are very few games that we get basically our entire stands filled out, so that’s one thing that’s always special,” Hardy said. “It’s hard sometimes because it’s a really different environment in the gym when you have just constant noise and everyone’s cheering a lot. For games, we almost never use our hand signals because you can usually hear, but we had to practice making sure we knew all our hand signals for our plays just because we knew how loud it was gonna be. The feeling of making even a small play and the crowd being 10 times louder fills you with adrenaline.”
Guard Brandon Luo (11) said that one of the highlight shots of the game significantly furthered the gap, giving Westview a great lead.
“A key moment in the third quarter of the game was when Brody Alexander (12) made a corner three pointer to extend the lead to 14 points,” he said. “Our bench was standing up and hyped while our players on the court were celebrating the three.”
Luo said that the team had many strengths throughout the game while also learning some things the team would have to work on in the future.
“Some things that the team did well in this game was handling MC’s pressure and our defense,” Luo said. “Coming into the game we knew that MC had a very fast play style and I think we were very prepared for it. We had few turnovers as a team on the offensive end and had many defensive stops on the other end. One thing that we can work on in the future is our communication in loud situations. It was very hard to hear each other on the court and our coach because of the loud and energetic atmosphere of the gym.”
Hardy said the game started out slower than expected because of the pressure of the rivalry and heat from the crowd.
“The first quarter was pretty slow because I think our team in general tends to want to push the ball and get transition points,” Hardy said. “I think that was mostly just nerves. We haven’t been in a crowd that big in a little while, so with all the noise, we kind of wanted to play a little bit safer.”
However, Hardy said they picked up the pace once the team relaxed and realized how they could improve the game strategy.
“As time went by, we realized that they really weren’t defending our sets and so we realized we could break away,” he said. “We started to push the pace a bit. Once that third quarter hit and we really started to get some good 10-point runs where [Mt. Carmel wasn’t] scoring much, that’s when we broke away. I think we made like 33 pointers in a row. If they hit 1, then we hit 2 more. Just those 3s were the big game moving ones. Once those were hit, that was when everyone was feeling all energetic and we wanted to go win the game. The fourth quarter was just cruising to the finish line and then we ended up getting some of our bench in because we were up by so much. Just making it play at our pace helped it and once we ended up winning it kind of showed just how meaningful it was that we were able to accomplish all those goals against one of our rival league teams.”
During the timeouts, Luo said the team worked on recognizing new strategies they could implement on court and motivating the players.
“Some of the things that were talked about in timeouts were our plays and what we could do better on the court,” Luo said. “The main thing that I think got us to be motivated to hop back in the game is that for some players, it would be the last time ever playing MC. This is usually the biggest game because of our rivalry. We really wanted to enjoy the moment and make the most out of it.”
Hardy said preparation played a huge role in their performance. The team studied scouting reports and paid special attention to the Sundevils’ key scorers.
“We take into account a lot of scouting reports and we look at some of their players,” he said. “They had a player, number 12, that was pretty good, so we had to make sure we were face-guarding him and making sure that it was going to be a hard time for him to score.”
Hardy said one of the team’s strategies was focusing on strong defense while letting two key players on the team score.
“We leave most of the scoring up to Lawrance Lam (12) and Shervin Kamsi (12) mostly,” he said. “When it comes to traits as a team, we wanna make sure we’re focusing on playing good defense, because we have talented players that can score the ball. We want to make sure we can keep teams to low points because if teams score high then it’s just a battle of who can shoot better and we want to make sure it doesn’t even have to come down to who’s shooting better. If we just make sure to have good defense, it almost turns the game into a boring, grindy game, and we’ll know we’ll come out victorious at the end.”
Hardy also said the team focused both on the weaknesses they’ve had in past games and limiting the strong points of the opposing team.
“There are a couple of points that we have lost in games in the past on rebounding,” Hardy said. “If we don’t rebound against a team and let them get some offensive boards, that’s a great way to lose. We basically just pick things that [the other team is] good at and try to make sure we limit those things and make sure we focus on the things that could possibly lose us the game.”
Despite the intense nature of the game, Hardy said the supportive team dynamic and coaches really helped the players prepare for the game.
“Before the game there’ll be some music [playing], and we always like to have some random handshakes with people even if we’re not the starters,” Hardy said. “Just kind of getting into that teammate mentality and keeping things positive [helps]. The coaches are really good at preparing us for any game. They watched a bunch of films beforehand to identify any weaknesses and also made sure that we hit all of them in practice before so that when we got to the game, we had that in our mind. When I’m on this person guarding, I know that he almost always goes right. So now I know to just guard him to the right side. It helps simplify the game a lot when it comes to game time.”
