EAST SYRACUSE – Facing an opponent three times, even a great one, gives a team the chance to get the result it wanted.
Yet the Chittenango boys basketball team never could solve the puzzle of Westhill, who backed up its top seed by defeating the no. 4 seed Bears 75-44 in Tuesday night’s Section III Class A semifinal at East Syracuse Minoa High School.
Not only had the Warriors won 11 in a row going into the game, it carried the confidence from beating the Bears in last year’s sectional Class B semifinal on the way to a state title, plus two regular-season wins over Chittenango along with the lessons learned from those meetings.
In both of this season’s games – an 84-76 decision on Jan. 17, then a 69-58 decision on Feb. 6 – Chittenango lost despite big games from star junior Ryan Moesch, especially the 46 points he notched in the first defeat.
Given Moesch’s prodigious scoring gift, Westhill was determined to keep him from getting his trademark big point totals, even if it meant abandoning its traditional man-to-man defensive approach.
Here, from the moment Moesch crossed midcourt, he faced double teams from Dom Zawadzki and Eli Welch, who shadowed him on drives to the basket and also stayed close whenever he decided to pull up and shoot.
Initially, this didn’t work. A combined four 3-pointers – one from Moesch, two from Jack Lamphere and one from Brendon Barnard – had the Bears leading 17-11 late in the first quarter.
Yet when those outside shots stopped falling, Westhill took over, moving in front early in the second period and using a 21-2 run to gain control, with eight of those points coming from Eli Prince, who notched 35 and 21 points, respectively, the first two times they met.
Meanwhile, Moesch was shut out in that second period. Even with that, Chittenango only trailed 33-23 at halftime, but back-to-back 3-pointers by Zawadzki, a player not known for his offensive gifts, helped the Warriors pull further away early in the third quarter.
Ultimately, Moesch would finish with 22 points, which provided a consolation in that it allowed him to pass Brandon Corp and, with 1,682 career points, become the program’s all-time leading scorer.
But Moesch had to work until the end to get that total, which Prince equaled as Welch (14 points), Kam Langdon (17 points) and Charlie DeMore (10 points) also reached double figures.
Lamphere’s eight points were the most outside of Moesch for the Bears, whose season concluded at 14-8, nearly half those defeats coming at Westhill’s expense.
