Sports
Bulldogs Sink Bruins in Nail-Biter
The Westfield Bulldogs finished the game 54-53 with only seconds to go.
With just over 10 seconds left on the clock and his team down by two points, Westfield's junior guard Quentin Basil found an opening in the corner of Lake Braddock's three-two defense and splashed home the go-ahead three pointer.
"He is a gamer," said Coach Doug Ewell. "There is no other way to say it. He's just a gamer."
Basil benefitted greatly from the amount of attention paid to teammate Zach Elcano. Throughout the evening, Lake Braddock attempted to speed up the tempo of the game in an effort to neutralize the six feet-ten inch junior center Elcano. Elcano finished the evening with a steady eight point effort, but had a much greater impact under the basket on the defensive end.
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"They did a really good job of trying to speed the tempo of the game up and our kids fell right into it," Ewell said. "They knew that our advantage over them, as well as a majority of the teams we're going to play, is Zach [Elcano] and they were able to take him out of the game."
After three quarters of back-and-forth basketball, Westfield took a commanding 12 point advantage midway through the final period behind strong performances from Basil and senior guard David Aurora. The Bruins clawed back and pulled within two points with 2:42 left in the game.
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"We didn't handle the pressure very well at the end," Ewell said. "But I'm sure we'll get better after watching the tape tomorrow."
Shortly thereafter, Lake Braddock's Chris Williams knotted the game at 51 with a right handed jumper over Elcano.
"We've just got to keep playing hard," said Coach Brian Metress. "Right now we're just a very disjointed team. We've got a couple young kids that are up because our football team made it so deep into the playoffs. So all we can do is play harder than our opponent, and I think we did that down the stretch."
With 10.7 seconds left in the game, however, Basil sunk the game winning three pointer from the left corner and all but finished the contest for Westfield, who escaped with a 54-53 victory and their fourth consecutive win.
"We play a little game of 21 every day after shoot around," Ewell said. "[Quentin Basil] won that game this afternoon. And he won the game for us tonight."
