Westhill hopes to ‘pull off the impossible’ against East Catholic
Roberto Nieves knew it was going to be a season of adjustments for the Westhill boys basketball team. Not only is Nieves the first-year head coach, but the program lost 12 seniors from last year’s team that finished at 16-8 behind Jeyson Slade, a GameTimeCT all-state selection.
But one never expects to have a winless season. Yet, that is what the Vikings have gone through at 0-20. Nieves was an assistant under Howard White for 12 years before taking over this season.
“It’s been tough. There is no way to sugarcoat it, no way around it,” Nieves said. “We haven’t been able to put it together for 32 minutes in a game this year. We’ve had spurts, little stretches where we are capable of doing good things. We had zero kids with zero varsity experience (returning), so we knew that it would be a struggle, but at the end of the day, this was unexpected.”
But the season isn’t over for Westhill. The Vikings have a CIAC postseason game on Wednesday night. They travel to Manchester to play the No. 1 seed in Division I, East Catholic, which has been ranked the No. 1 team in the GameTimeCT Top 10 poll all season long.
Why? Since the CIAC switched to a five-division format for the 2017-18 season, Division I has never had a full allotment of at least 32 teams in the bracket determined in the preseason. So every team qualifies for the tournament regardless of record.
This year, the CIAC boys basketball committee decided to go with a 16-team Division I bracket. There are two other teams with a winning percentage fewer than 40 percent, which is the minimum to qualify for the other four divisions. Westhill is the first winless team to play a tournament game under this format.
“We feel we didn’t earn a spot,” Nieves said.
East Catholic is the defending champion and coming off winning the CCC tournament over Bloomfield last Thursday.
“The kids know they are going up against the juggernaut of the division and overall in the state,” Nieves said. “Go up there and give 100 percent is all I’m asking. … For one night, you never know what can happen.”
Nieves said he has been playing a lot of sophomores this season and also starts a freshman. There are three seniors on the roster.
The hope is gaining this experience will help turn things around quickly for Westhill.
On top of the tall task on the court, Nieves is dealing with a loss of his own off
the court. His grandmother, Emma Gahrcia, died. He said on Monday his assistants will run practice on Tuesday while he attends the funeral.
Nieves will be back with his team on Wednesday to take the long bus ride from Stamford to Manchester.
“We know East Catholic has the best team, they won it last year and it’s kind of a tough spot for us. We know it’s a David and Goliath situation,” Nieves said. “It would be nice for us to pull off the impossible.”