This past weekend on December 13th and 14th the Westside varsity basketball team continued their campaign against the Omaha Northwest Huskies and the eighth-ranked Papillion-La Vista South Titans. The fifth-ranked Warriors were going into the weekend 1-1 after a second-place finish in Lincoln Northeast early bird tournament the weekend before. 

In Friday night’s matchup, the Warriors, at home, went up against the 1-1 Northwest Huskies. Early into the first quarter, neither team had much to show offensively and with under halfway to go in the first, Westside was down 8-4. Jadin Booth, PJ Ngambi and Cal Weidemann would then drain back to back to back three’s and the Warriors would put themselves back into the driver’s seat at the end of the first quarter. 

They would not relinquish the lead for the rest of the night as four of the teams’ starting five would all get into double figures in points on the night. As the starting-five went to the bench, the Warriors stretched the lead to as far as 40 points going up 80-40 with just over 4 minutes to go in the fourth quarter. As the final buzzer sounded on the night, Westside took the 87-63 win and advanced to 2-1 on the season.

All twelve players on the roster made it on the floor at some time throughout the night, and ten out of those twelve put up some kind of points on the board. Head Coach Jim Simons said he felt that with the team passing the ball around, it gave them the ability to show off their skills as a team.

“When the ball moves and we don’t over dribble and we trust each other and we share the ball, we have a lot of skilled guys. We have a lot of guys who can make shots,” Simons said. “We’re going to be undersized in a lot of the games we play, but we think our advantages are our quickness and our skill-level.”

In their Saturday matchup, the Warriors went up against the eighth-ranked Titans of Papillion-La Vista South. All throughout the day, the Warriors and Titans went back and forth on the floor, keeping the game close throughout. Led by seniors Jadin Booth and Carl Brown, the Warriors drained 11 three’s on the night and held the lead for the entire game beyond the end of the first quarter. Four of the five starters on the floor once again put up double-digit scoring on the night and the Warriors took down their first ranked opponent of the season, 65-58.

Throughout the weekend, the Warriors put up a total of 22 three-pointers on 56 attempts, double the amount put in the net by their opponents. Carl Brown, who put up six of those 22 shots beyond the arc said he felt that their focus throughout practice on those shots really helped them be successful come game time.

“We shoot a lot of threes and we plan on making a lot,” Brown said. “We do a lot of shooting in practice and I feel like that’s just our focus. Our offense is based off of three-point shots and layups. I felt like we moved the ball pretty good and we got some good shots. We got the shots we wanted and we knocked them down.”