Up against a pair of Class AA sides, the Westhill boys basketball team, who sat atop the state Class B rankings as 2017 came to an end, nearly left Christian Brothers Academy’s Manny Leone Memorial Classic with an 0-2 mark.
Having already survived close calls with Chittenango and Syracuse Academy of Science before the holiday break, the Warriors were not as fortunate in the Dec. 28 opening round against Henninger, who used a late shooting tear by Jaden Graves to prevail 67-60.
Westhill led until the middle of the second quarter, when the Black Knights started to find spaces to shoot and convert. Sean Dadey had 14 first-half points, but his side still trailed 32-29 at the break..
It got worse in the second half, and by the middle of the fourth quarter the Warriors trailed 53-42, yet with its defensive pressure the Warriors nearly made it all the way back.
Steadily, Westhill cut its deficit to two, 60-58, doing so even though Graves had hit on a pair of big 3-pointers. The Black Knights then pounced on the rebound of a missed free throw and, after Travis Grey’s foul shot made it 61-58, another miss led to another Henninger rebound and, with 20 seconds left, Graves drilled another 3-pointer to clinch it.
Of Graves’ 30 points, 15 of them came in the fourth quarter. With Grey contributing 16 points. Dadey finished with 26 points, with Zechariah Brown adding 15 points and Holden Carroll getting 10 points.
Things nearly got worse for Westhill in the Dec. 30 consolation game against host CBA, but a last-minute comeback produced a tough 47-46 victory over the Brothers.
The night before, CBA had blown a 13-point lead in the last four minutes of regulation to Jamesville-DeWitt and lost, 67-65, in overtime on Payton Shumpert’s steal and basket just as the clock ran out.
For most of the game against Westhill, though, superb defense by the Brothers allowed it to stay in front and withstand the Warriors’ third-quarter run. Back-to-back baskets by Avion Othman and Malcolm Jackson gave CBA a 46-41 lead late in the game.
From there, though, Westhill shut out the Brothers, and after Dadey hit on back-to-back baskets to make it 46-45, the Warriors forced a steal and got a chance to take the lead.
Understandably, CBA focused its defense on Dadey, who had 22 points, But Dadey escaped the double team and passed it to Brown, who drove and scored the go-ahead basket with four seconds left.
Still, the Brothers had time for a last shot. Othman drove the length of the court and tried a short jumper at the buzzer – but it clanged off the rim
Henninger went from defeating Westhill to knocking off J-D 91-67 in the finals, leading by as much as 34 in a one-sided first half before cooling off later.
