As we come to the end of the basketball season, it’s time to look back on the season and how our teams did. Overall, it was a pretty good season, with both teams advancing to the second round of the playoffs and both teams being in the top 15 of OSAA rankings.
The girls started off the season with a bit of a struggle but quickly began to figure things out. After only beginning the season with a 5-7 record they went on to dominate their league games, with their only defeat being a 74-67 overtime loss to McNary. After this loss, they then went on a 9-game winning streak to finish the regular season 16-8.
On Wednesday, February 28th, the girls played Beaverton for the second time this season in the first round of the OSAA state playoffs. It was an extremely slow-paced game with the halftime score only being 16-14, but both teams picked it up in the second half and in the final seconds a strong defensive showing from the Titans sent the game to overtime with a 38-38 tie. Overtime was extremely one-sided in West Salem’s favor and the game ended 52-42. They advanced to the next round.
Over the weekend, the girls headed up north to play a strong #2-seeded Clackamas team and were competing pretty well with them, but an early second-half run by the Cavaliers quickly increased the point spread and West ended up losing 75-50, ending their season.
The West Salem boys’s regular season was good too. They started out the season 3-2, before going on a 14-game winning streak to be 17-2. The last few games of conference play were tough, however, and they fell to South Salem and McNary to have a final conference game against Sprague to decide the league champion.
It was a very slow and physical game, with the score at the end of the first half only being 26-18 with Sprague leading, and there was a long halftime due to a malfunctioning shot clock that resulted in it not being present on one side of the court in the second half.
It was most definitely a worthwhile watch, with the game coming down to the final 3 seconds and West having the ball down 3 points. But a very stressed inbound resulted in the ball being thrown away out of bounds giving possession back to Sprague. A Sprague player then knocked down 1/2 free throws, securing a 4-point lead. Even with a last-second buzzer beater by West Salem Senior Jackson Leach to bring the game to a one-point deficit, the Olympians won with time expiring before another play could be made.
On Tuesday, February 29th, the West Salem boys played the first round of the state playoffs at home against Nelson. They got out to an early lead and stayed ahead for the whole game, winning 91-74, and advancing to the next round of the playoffs against Tualatin.
On the following Friday, March 1st, they faced off against a strong Tualatin team for a state tournament berth, and kept it relatively close, tying it up in the 4th quarter 61-61, but ultimately, Tualatin pulled away and won 79-70.
I decided to conduct some interviews with two girls on the basketball team. The first interview was with the Central Valley Conference Girls Basketball Player of the Year, Emma Zuniga (10). When she was asked how she thought the season went for them she answered, “I think it went well for the whole team. It was a good learning experience. We’re all really young still so I think it was a good growing year and we still made it to [the] second round of playoffs which is pretty good.” She also said, “I think it went a lot better than most of us thought it was going to. Being such a young team it was just hard playing against a bunch of seniors and even juniors, but I think we all pulled together well.”
I also conducted an interview with JV player Sophia Cooley (10) who when asked about the season said, “I think it was pretty good. We lost most of our games but we worked really hard to push and try to win,” but she was rather disappointed with the season as a whole. When questioned about if it lived up to her expectations, she said, “Not really. I mean… I thought we could have beaten most [of] those teams.”
They both agreed that their favorite memory from the season was going to the OSU women’s basketball game as a team mid-season and watching OSU battle it out with UCLA.
Overall, it was a pretty successful season for both teams and there is a lot to look forward to for next season.