High school basketball: West holds off Murray

SALT LAKE CITY — Heading into the Region 2 matchup between Murray and West at West High School Friday night, the game plan was clear-cut for the Panthers: Stop Murray big man David Collette.

Although Collette finished with 22 points, he was held to four first-half points to help West build a big enough cushion to hold on for a 51-45 win and secure first place in region play.

"(Murray) is very tough. Obviously, their big gun is Collette and our focus on defense was to stop (him)," said West coach Bob Lyman, "They did a really good job of hanging with us in the second half."

The Panthers implemented multiple defensive sets, switching anywhere from 1-3-1 zones to man-to-man to fluster Collette and company and not allow them to find a grove offensively for the entire 32 minutes of play.

"Their very good coach (Jason) Workman does a very good job of execution. They run very, very good sets," said Lyman. "We don't want them to get into a comfort zone. If they were successful with one defense, we switched up a little bit to keep them on their heels."

West (8-2) was able to separate from the Spartans (7-3) in the second quarter behind Tyrell Corbin, who orchestrated a 9-2 run.

"Tyrell is so good. He gets going early, middle of the game and at the end. He's nonstop; he's really tough to contain," said Lyman, "He's probably 80 percent of our offense. Without Ty I think we'd still be a good team, but not as good as we are."

Corbin finished with 22 points, 10 of which came from the charity stripe.

The strong bench play, however, proved to be the "it" factor in closing out the win — specifically the strong play of Thomas Bullock, who scored a season-high nine points and made key defensive plays .

"We feel like bringing him off the bench gives us a spark," said Lyman, "He's a small little fella and we lose a little bit of height with him in there, but he's really quick. He gets his hands on passes — just brings a lot of energy to us."

"We got a little burst of energy from a couple of kids," said Lyman, "Bullock and Cheney Doane. I have to give credit to our big guys playing Collette like they did — they didn't soften up."

Email: tphibbs@desnews.com