Wildcats Cap a Memorable Regular Season by Beating Briarcliff
to the basket.
Coach Sean Mayer admits his Westlake girls’ basketball team is heading into uncharted territory with the sectional playoffs about to begin.
The Wildcats ended a nearly three-decade drought for the school by earning a share of their league championship last season and just recently clinched a second straight title with a victory over Croton on Senior Night that has transformed them from hunters to the hunted.
“To be able to come back and go undefeated in the league and win back-to-back league titles is really, really special for these kids and the school,” said Mayer, shortly after the Wildcats had put the finishing touches on a 15-3 regular season with a 63-45 win at Briarcliff on Friday. “It’s never been done before.”
Capping a busy week in which Westlake won three times in four days, guards Natalie Alfieri and Faith Lovett combined for 29 points as the Wildcats broke open a game against the Bears that was still tied midway through the third quarter. A 10-0 spurt that ended with a Lovett 3-pointer from the right corner with just under three minutes remaining put an end to the Bears and assured Westlake of finishing unbeaten in league play.
“Did I envision going undefeated in the league?” asked Mayer. “No, we’ve never done that before. We haven’t even come close to doing that before. I mean, to win on the road at Briarcliff and Pleasantville, I told ‘em (his players) you just wanna stay in those games. And we stayed in ‘em and won ‘em.”
For a while, though, it seemed Briarcliff just might be able to ruin the Wildcats’ quest to finish undefeated in league play. The Bears ran off eight straight points late in the opening quarter, getting a 3-pointer from Kelsey Simpson, a layup by Grace Orr and then another trey from eighth-grader Maddie Plank to grab a 12-11 lead.
But the quarter ended with Westlake regaining the advantage on a 3-pointer by Lovett, who had made seven of them in a dazzling display 48 hours earlier on Senior Night. The Bears never got the lead back again, but a 6-0 run sparked by successive baskets from Jackie Contento midway through the second quarter moved them to within 21-18.
After another bucket by Contento that cut the Briarcliff deficit to 24-22, the half ended with the Wildcats’ Jesi Oswald and Kathleen Cullen making 3-pointers to increase the Westlake lead to eight. But the third quarter began with a 6-0 Bears’ run that included a 3-point shot by Carly Fanelli, who finished with a team-high 13 points.
The Bears evened the score at 35 apiece after a fast-break layup by Simpson and then a 15-foot pull-up jumper by Fanelli. Less than 10 seconds later, though, Alfieri, who scored a game-high 15 points, provided a conventional 3-point play and Oswald soon followed with a trey from the right side of the court. The Wildcats took a 43-38 lead into the fourth quarter and were about to run away from the Bears.
Plank, recently brought up to the varsity, began the fourth quarter with a runner from right of the lane that cut the Westlake lead to just three points. But Oswald’s third 3-pointer of the game, this time from the top of the key, ignited a 15-2 Wildcat run that decided the outcome. The Bears went scoreless for nearly four minutes before Fanelli ended the drought with a put-back that was far too little and late to make a difference.
“We get the game right there and then we get in a big hurry,” said Bears coach Don Hamlin, whose team had led talented Ardsley by seven points at halftime before collapsing just a day earlier. “We just have to get better at understanding the moment and finishing plays. We just get out of control at the worst time ever. We’re just not very good with that.”
The Bears surrendered a staggering 52 points in the second half against Ardsley and Hamlin knows they won’t make much of an impact in the playoffs without a big improvement.
“If we play poorly defensively, it doesn’t matter who we play,” he said. “We’ve just gotta find a way to put a whole game together.”
Meanwhile, the Wildcats’ Mayer will be looking for his players to continue their winning ways with the first round of the tournament set to begin on Thursday.
“The goal for this team is to win the sectional title,” he said. “We need four more wins and it’s not gonna be easy. But that’s our goal. We’re gonna give it a shot.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
Read Andy’s archived work here.
