Westlake girls overcome slow start
20-0 run sparks Wolverines to win over Great Mills
Through three quarters of play on Wednesday evening in a Southern Maryland Athletic Conference girls basketball game in Waldorf, Great Mills and Westlake appeared destined for a nail-biter and potentially overtime. It ended quite differently, however.
Great Mills (2-1) led 24-19 at the intermission and still owned a 37-34 lead with just over two minutes remaining in the third quarter. But the Wolverines closed out the quarter on a 9-0 run, including a bucket from senior Janelle Fields that appeared well after the buzzer, and the hosts embarked on an 11-0 run over the first six minutes of the fourth quarter to forge a 54-37 lead en route to a 63-40 victory.
Westlake (3-0) had defeated Huntingtown and Patuxent by a combined sum of 101 points in its first two victories, but through much of the first three periods against Great Mills the Wolverines looked like they were in for a battle with the Hornets. Great Mills had downed North County of Anne Arundel County, 60-47, before trouncing Thomas Stone, 69-20, so Wednesday’s meeting with Westlake appeared to be the first test for the Hornets as well.
“We definitely played with a lot more intensity on defense in the second half,” said Westlake senior Jasmine Gholson, who led all scorers with 19 points, with teammate Latavia Washington close behind with 16. “We also did a much better job passing in the second half. We didn’t move the ball around well in the first half and we didn’t play good weakside defense. That allowed them to get a lot of easy buckets.”
Great Mills junior Kirsten Hamilton connected on two three-point field goals in the second quarter and
hit a short jumper in the third to lift it to a 28-21 lead. But the Wolverines countered with a 7-0 run to draw even. Gholson gave Westlake its first lead of the second half with a three-pointer, followed by a layup by Washington and a belated layup from Fields that appeared well after the buzzer. The referees, however, counted it after a brief conference.
After being outscored 9-0 over the last two minutes of the third quarter, Great Mills encountered a much longer drought to start the fourth.
Westlake’s pressure defense forced the Hornets to commit turnovers on nine possessions in the first five minutes of the final frame and the Wolverines extended a six-point lead to 5437 with two minutes remaining. In all, it was a pivotal, emphatic 20-0 run that finally ended when sophomore Toyin Allen hit a short jumper with 1 minute 50 seconds remaining.
“It all started with their pressure,” said Great Mills coach Matt Wood, whose team will head to North Caroline High School for a two-day tournament next week. “We did a good job against it in the first half, but in the second half we were clearly not all on the same page. We threw passes that just sailed nowhere and Westlake turned the turnovers into easy buckets. We played well for three quarters and then the wheels just fell off.”
Westlake also got to the freethrow line early and often in the third quarter with the Wolverines connecting on 14 of 18 foul shots in the final frame, while the Hornets’ Raevyn Harris made one of two free throws in the final frame to account for the visitors’ lone trip to the charity stripe.
Westlake will play in the Chris Sole Holiday Hoops Classic next week, which is taking place at Westlake and North Point high schools. Shepard nearing 1,000 In other SMAC nonconference girls action on Wednesday, St. Charles High School senior Desirae Shepard scored 20 points to lead the host Spartans past Northern 75-29.
That sum enabled Shepard to get within 15 points of becoming the first St. Charles basketball player, male or female, to reach the 1,000-point plateau heading into Thursday’s game against Leonardtown.
The Spartans are scheduled to return to action next week in the Roberts Oxygen Holiday Classic at Springbrook High School in Montgomery County.