Cherry Hill West Boys Basketball Uses Monster 2nd Half to Beat East

It was sweet redemption for Cherry Hill West Saturday.

With cross-town rival Cherry Hill East dominating on the basketball court of late, including a last-second victory just four weeks ago, the Lions boys pulled off an unlikely comeback, roaring up after being down 12 at halftime to pull off a 49-43 victory that ended with the team—and plenty of white-shirted West fans—dancing at midcourt after the final buzzer at the Cherry Hill East Invitational.

Even 15 minutes after the game, in the semidarkness of the halls below East’s DiBart Gymnasium, West’s Rodney Williams was still holding a quiet celebration, basking in the emotion of the victory—the first for West over East over seven games he’s been involved in, in both football and basketball.

“I’ve got to find some words,” Williams said, still nearly speechless. “I’m loving this moment right now.”

With a game-high 15 points and a timely trey to open the fourth quarter and tie things up, Williams had put the pedal to the floor and sparked the Lions’ second-half run, which saw them score more in the third quarter—19 points—than they did in the entire first half, while at the same time tightening up on defense.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the fourth quarter, where West pressured East’s shooters into bad shot after bad shot, and got a couple of huge blocks from Williams. The Cougars scored just four points all quarter, two off free throws and two off the team’s only field goal, which came after Williams intentionally tossed the ball to East’s Jake Silpe, who laid it in at the buzzer to finish off the game with 14 points to lead the Cougars.

The key to the game was coming out positive after their difficult first half, Williams said.

“We didn’t get down on each other—our players stepped up,” he said. “We wanted this one...we never let up.”

That desire had been sharpened by the 28 days since the teams’ last meeting, where the Lions took a particularly stinging loss to rival East, falling on their home court on a last-second shot that also denied Williams a chance at 1,000 for his career—he ended the game at 999.

East’s always-vocal Countrymen spent that first game railing Williams verbally at every chance, and picked up their taunts right where they left off, chanting everything from “overrated” to “caveman” in Williams’ direction every time he touched the ball.

But instead of being bothered by it, Williams said he used those epithets as motivation.

“East, they always come at me...I hear it—best believe I hear it,” he said. “It’s basically telling me to pick it up.”

He wasn’t the only Lion to step up, either—Will Plenty added 13 points and helped West dominate the inside, and Mike Faust was a steady hand through the game, scoring 12.

“It’s been close, but we’ve never had the opportunity to actually win the game,” Williams said of the rivalry of late. “We had it, and we weren’t going to let it go.”

The win means the teams split the regular-season matchup, but another game looms, if both can get through the first round of the South Jersey, Group 4 tournament, which begin Feb. 25.

West, seeded No. 14, will need to score an upset on the road at Shawnee, while the No. 6 Cougars will have to hold on at home against Clearview. If both teams win, they would play in the second round, Feb. 27 at East.