After falling behind to Fremont 7-0 early, the Westlake Thunder girls basketball team stuck together and tightened things up defensively, eventually allowing their offense to get rolling on their way to a somewhat comfortable 53-30 victory in the 6A basketball playoffs Thursday.
Chloe Jensen scored 14 points for Westlake, while Ava Chaney added 12 and Avery Thompson 10 to lead the way.
Being slow out of the gate and struggling from the opening tip is not something new to Westlake, so they were somewhat comfortable with the position they found themselves in early.
“That’s kind of what we do, overcoming adversity. We have a core of seniors who are super mentally tough. They never really panic. We play a lot of younger players and they look up to our seniors when it comes to how to respond to things. Everyone just stayed the course and executed the game plan and we turned it around quickly,” said Westlake head coach Charlotte Macfarlane.
The second quarter was the turning point in the game, as Westlake’s defense held Fremont to just seven points in the quarter, while Westlake started finding the bottom of the hoop and scored 16 points in the frame, which saw them take a 20-13 lead into the halftime break.
“Our goal coming in was to play together as a team, regardless of what was happening. We’ve had other games during the season where we’ve been so internalized on what we’re doing that we don’t play good team basketball,” Macfarlane said.
“Today we were talking, sharing the ball and cheering for each other. It was an awesome team win and if I had to give the ball to someone I would give it to the entire team.”
Westlake chose to stay the course and stuck together as a team, which ended up leading to a somewhat comfortable fourth quarter and a blowout victory.
With the win, Westlake will face Lone Peak in the next round of the tournament. While Westlake might seem to be heavy underdogs heading into the matchup, Macfarlane says not so fast.
“We’re playing a Lone Peak team that we played twice in region. Our kids believe after a game like that, if we play together, we can do anything,” she said.
“It’s kind of like a David and Goliath where we don’t really have size and Lone Peak is super big, aggressive and athletic. We just have to fight and fight with each other and that is how we are going to be successful from here on out.”
In the loss, Fremont was led in scoring by Olivia Surrage and Ama Herrick, who contributed nine and eight points, respectively.