High school basketball: West pushes win streak to 11

MURRAY — Very methodically, West High's boys basketball team keeps winning games.

Despite returning just one contributor from last year's 4A state championship team — albeit a good one in junior guard Tyrell Corbin — the Panthers continue to impress, and after Friday's 53-39 victory over Murray, they find themselves in the midst of an 11-game winning streak.

"If you would've told me at the first of the season we were going to do something like this, I would've been very surprised," said West coach Bob Lyman. "But as the season's gone on, it's kind of been a process of who to play because we lost so many people off of last year's team."

In many respects, Friday's victory was a process as well.

The Panthers struggled both offensively and defensively in the first half, and were lucky to only be trailing by a 23-18 margin at the break.

Lyman said he wasn't necessarily surprised by the slow start.

"When we pound it into a half-court game, we seem to take a lot of time feeling teams out," said Lyman. "I wouldn't say we're a slow-starting team, but once we get a little momentum going, it's bam, bam, bam."

That's exactly what happened in the second half. West opened the third quarter on a 6-0 run, ultimately forcing five Murray turnovers in the quarter to build a 32-28 lead heading into the fourth.

The Panthers didn't let up in the fourth quarter, either, as they knocked down their first five shots in opening a cozy 14-point lead with four minutes remaining.

"When we start getting aggressive with our defense, we kind of feed off of it and we get a little momentum and our offense gets better," said Lyman.

After forcing Murray into just four first-half turnovers, West's defense forced the Spartans into 12 second-half turnovers which led to numerous fast-break points as it improved to 12-2 overall and 5-0 in Region 2.

Not surprisingly, Corbin led the way offensively for the Panthers with 22 points, while Jordan Tanner chipped in with 10 on a night West shot 28 percent in the first half but 54 percent in the second half.

Well before West upped the ante after halftime, though, Murray seemed poised for the upset.

Led by the hot early hand of David Collette, who scored eight of his team-high 15 points in the first quarter, Murray made seven of its first 10 shots to build a 16-15 lead.

"The big guy, Collette, was hard to stop in the first half. He was a monster inside," said Lyman. "I think some of our guys were a bit surprised at how good he was."

Lyman said the insertion of Junior Vea into the game in the second quarter helped slow down Collette, and in the second half all of West's players contributed to the frustrating evening for the Spartans.

e-mail: jedward@desnews.com