Back at the scene of a great triumph 12 months earlier, the Westhill boys basketball team faced a far different outcome on this particular trip.
The Warriors’ Class B regional final against Section IV champion Seton Catholic Sunday took place at Binghamton’s Floyd L. Maines Veterans Memorial Arena, exactly where it claimed the 2017 state title.
Instead of another triumph, though, Westhill went away with its season at an end, the Saints prevailing 57-50 as the Warriors chased Seton for most of the afternoon, and briefly passed them – only to go cold at the worst possible time.
Playing just a couple of miles from its school campus, the Saints enjoyed a virtual home-court advantage, even with Westhill’s familiarity with the venue that, once again, will play host to the state final four this weekend.
More importantly, Seton boasted a balanced lineup that intended to dictate the tempo and, at least for a while, solved the riddle of the Warriors’ trademark man-to-man defense.
Igniting that effort, Leo Gallagher, the Saints’ tough 5-foot-10 point guard, scored six points in the first quarter, and Westhill found it difficult to contain him, trailing 20-13 early in the second period.
For the rest of the half, it was a story of scoring runs – the Warriors tying it with 7-0 and 6-0 spurts as, in between, Seton ran off six straight points of its own. More importantly, the Saints got the last four points of the half to go in front 30-26 at the break.
Still, the pace was slowing and Westhill was starting to make stops on a regular basis. That effort peaked in the third quarter, when the Warriors held Seton without a point for nearly four minutes.
Meanwhile, John Geer’s 3-pointer launched a 9-0 burst that gave Westhill its only lead of the game. Back-to-back baskets by Zechariah Brown and Sean Dadey, plus Dadey’s pair of free throws, produced a 37-34 edge.
Yet for the rest of the period, the Warriors were shut out. What’s more, other than Brown’s 3-pointer in the opening minute of the fourth quarter, the Warriors did not get a field goal for an eight-minute stretch.
By then, Seton had moved in front to stay, the margin growing as much as 55-45 as its own swarming defense cut off all of Westhill’s usual passing lanes.
And the Saints pulled this off despite not hitting a 3-pointer until Gallagher converted from beyond the arc with 2:37 left, which made it 51-42, ultimately too much to overcome, though Westhill did close the gap to 55-50 in the final seconds.
Gallagher finished with 26 points, nearly half his team’s output, while freshman Brett Rumpel produced 14 points off the bench. Dadey finished with 18 points as Brown got 12 points and Geer had nine points. Holden Carroll added six points.
Dadey, Geer, Carroll, Owen Matukas, Corey Fracssica, Chris Holt and E.J. Zawadzki all graduate, leaving the Warriors to depend on the likes of Brown and Ryan Gilmartin to build around for 2018-19.
