Westgate Blasts Livonia 91-47

Westgate’s Kendrick Porter goes up

for a basket over a Livonia defender

 on Tuesday. WHS won, 91-47.

After watching the Livonia Wildcats jump out to a 7-3 lead in the first quarter of his team’s home opener, Westgate boys’ basketball head coach Oliver Winston decided to turn up the defensive pressure on his counterpart, Troy Green, Tuesday night.

The Tigers’ defensive pressure forced the Wildcats into 32 turnovers and WHS outscored Livonia 91-47 to improve their record to 7-3 on the young basketball season. D’Nerious Antoine and Brandon Malveaux led the Tigers with 14 and 13 points, respectively. Duval Jackson and Kendrick Porter scored 10 points each for the Tigers.

After stealing the ball away from Livonia on two consecutive plays for easy scores, WHS took the lead for good at the 5:27 mark of the first quarter after Joshua Boutte threw down a two-handed dunk that got the home crowd on its feet, prompting Green to call a time out.

“I knew if we get into a running game with them we were going to commit some turnovers,” Green said following the game. “I just did not know we were going to commit that many turnovers.”

Throughout the first and second quarter the Tigers’ defense continued to apply pressure despite regularly substituting the first and second teams. That same defensive pressure turned into easy transition points for the home team and Westgate led 54-34 at halftime.

“It’s always good to win your home opener,” Winston said. “But we are not where we need to be yet. We are not as consistent as we should be on offense and defensively we will get better once the kids get their basketball legs. We need to improve every week.”

Westgate (9-4) continued to apply its full court pressure defense after halftime and the Tigers continued to get layup after layup after layup before the officials sent the game to running time.

“Hats off to Westgate, they can play,” Green said. “They are one of the best teams in the state right now and they are only going to get better. We were playing without our two best players, Ivory Slaughter and Xavier Joseph, and our players still played hard. They did not quit and I am proud of them.”

Arkel Paul and Dontre Ruffin led Livonia with 14 and 12 points, respectively.

The loss sent the Wildcats to 6-8 on the year.

Courtesy of the Daily Iberian