Westran boys and girls both drop games to Salisbury

By Kris Childs
The Westran Hornets took their varsity boys and girls 13 miles down the road to face their biggest rival and L&CC competition the Salisbury Panthers.

Salisbury played its final home game of the season on Tuesday and you could tell by the size of the crowd in attendance. Coupled with the ongoing rivalry between the two teams, it was senior recognition night for Salisbury and before their games both the boys and girls student athletes and their parents were honored before their game. Salisbury is graduating eight senior girls and eight senior boys and one senior cheerleader.

Play began with the girls game and Salisbury being on a 23 game win streak was heavily favored in the contest. Salisbury’s defense was key in this one with the score after one 12-0. Their high pressure defense continued in the second along with a well designed offense and at the half the scoreboard read 30-8.

Salisbury all but shut down any attempt for the Lady Hornets to get inside and forced them to take low percentage shots from around the perimeter. Salisbury also ran a full court press for most of the game and often forced a turnover before Westran could cross half court.

In the third quarter the lead grew to 35 and a continuous clock was used for the remainder of the game. The Lady Panthers closed out the fourth quarter and won by a final of 54-18.

In the boys game there was a bit more excitement. With districts just a week away both teams knew that this game could be just a preliminary game to a potential districts showdown. There were lead changes throughout the entire game and with that momentum shifts as well. Any time Westran would seem to grab the momentum Salisbury would drain a three and the crowd would roar and any time Salisbury seemed to be rolling Westran’s Bryce Enyard would get a break away dunk to fire up Westran’s crowd.

Entering halftime Westran took a three point advantage into the second half leading 31-28. Westran mixed up their offense and balanced outside shots with passes inside. The teams continued to trade the lead until there was about two minutes left in the fourth quarter when Westran had a string of untimely turnovers and allowed Salisbury to take a big enough lead to close the game out with a win 64-59.

Westran had three players end the game in double figures, leading was Bryce Enyard with 27 then Tyler Aulber with 14 and Tyler Hunt with 12.

After the game Westran coach Scott Floyd talks about the game. “It’s tough to continue to battle from behind and think you’re going to win games. That is our 13th game this year that’s been decided by 5 points or less and we’re 5-8 in those games…. Three things that hurt us, I thought we had some defensive lapses throughout the course of the game… at times our rebounding was not very good, they got a lot of second chance points – you can’t do that – and third, I thought that we had flurries of turnovers at inopportune times. It didn’t seem like it was consistent throughout the game. We had 2 or 3 here [turnovers] and then we’d turn around and go good for 4 minutes then we’d turn around and have another 2 or 3…”

Westran is now 12-12 overall and 5-5 in the L&CC. Westran will play Brookfield at home Thursday night for their final home game of the season at 6 p.m. That will also be their senior recognition night.