BLYTHEWOOD – Fouls on the Westwood boys basketball team early in their game against Region 5-5A rival Blythewood came fast and furious Friday night.
The Bengals built a 30-11 lead with 3:07 left in the second quarter, largely on T.J. Lewis’s 13 foul shots, and 15-of-17 shooting from the free-throw line by that time.
Clearly, Redhawks head coach Trent Robinson was frustrated. While half of Blythewood’s points came at the foul line, while Westwood shooters hit 4 of 10 shots in the same stretch.
“I told the guys, I’m begging for fouls but y’all aren’t making free throws, and I’m looking like a complete idiot,” Robinson said. “So I told them we’ve got to stay mentally tough and stop fouling and we just really needed to get into the second half.”
The Redhawks listened. Down 19 points, Westwood closed out the first half on a 12-2 run, then tied the game at 42 to start the fourth quarter, and outlasted the Bengals 58-53 in the region opener for both teams.
Larry Brown finished the night with 19 points. Jayden Crews had 17 points, including five 3-pointers, three of which came in the third quarter. D’Marcus Thomas had 11 points.
Westwood, which beat Summerville, J.L. Mann, and South Aiken over the holiday break, hadn’t played a game in a week, and Robinson said it showed.
Blythewood fell behind 5-4 on a Crews 3-pointer and Thomas’ steal-and-layup in the opening minutes. From there, the Bengals went on a 13-0 scoring run on 10-of-12 free-throw shooting and an Elijah Major basket to take a 16-6 lead, and held an 18-7 lead at the first-quarter buzzer.
The fouls and free throws kept on coming for Blythewood as it worked up a 30-11 lead. Lewis had 22 points by that point.
Westwood cut out the fouling and cut its deficit to 32-24 at the half.
“We came out dead, we haven’t had a game in about a week, but that’s no excuse. We’ve got to start better,” Robinson said. “But the guys stayed mentally sharp. We’re an aggressive team, and you know in the second half that fouls are reset, so we could get back to being ourselves. We just needed a spark.”
The Redhawks chipped at Blythewood’s lead from the start of the third quarter. At the 2:44 mark Thomas sank a 3-pointer and 25 seconds later Brown got a steal and a layup to get them to within 42-40 in the final two minutes.
Derrick Brown’s basket with 1:41 left tied the game at 42, a stalemate that held to start the final quarter.
Blythewood got four more foul shots from Lewis to go up 46-42, but Westwood tied it at 46 after buckets from Brown and Daytron Cockfield with six minutes left.
The game had four lead changes from the 4:25 mark to the 2:24 mark. In the final turn of events, Blythewood’s Javarius Wyche sank a 3-pointer to put the Bengals up 53-52, but Thomas made the go-ahead shot seconds later. Westwood got a basket from Cockfield and two foul shots from Crews in the final two minutes to secure the win.
“Jayden Crews was good for us, Larry Brown was good for us. D’Marcus Thomas is a lead guard and is finally over his injury and we started to see some of those highlight plays,” Robinson said. “We rebounded well. We didn’t allow 3 (Lewis) to get more than 10 points (he scored 6 second-half points). I credit the coaching staff for the adjustments they made at halftime and credit to God for us being strong.”
Lewis’ 28 points led the Bengals (12-3), who were down in players being out of the lineup with the flu—as well as head coach Zeke Washington, who came down with the flu as well.
Longtime assistant Samson Meyer said being short-handed hurt the Bengals, but the team was still capable to close out a win.
“This is always a tough place to come play,” Meyer said. “We’ve got some guys down with the flu right now but our mantra’s always next-man-up. We did a good job of riding that early and we knew that the tide of the game was going to shift a little bit, and it did towards the end of the second quarter and into the third. We withstood it a little bit but we ran out of gas towards the end.”
Blythewood since followed up with a 72-40 victory over Spring Valley Monday.
Westwood (13-1) suffered its first defeat of the season to a seasoned Ridge View team Monday. Thomas had 13 points and four assists and Crews had 11 points, but the Blazers beat the Redhawks 67-47.
BLYTHEWOOD – 18-14-10-11 — 53
WESTWOOD – 7-17-18-16 — 58
B – T.J. Lewis 28, Torrean Sims 11, Stephens 7, Wyche 3, Major 2, Scriven 2.
W – Larry Brown 19, Jayden Crews 17, D’Marcus Thomas 11, Cockfield 5, Goddard 4, R. Brown 2.
