By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The South Salem Boys Basketball team came out firing and they came out aggressive.
Three-and-a-half minutes into their season opener against Century on Friday night at home, the Saxons led 10-0 on the Jaguars. And they weren’t finished yet.
South Salem used that start as momentum as they went on to score 50 first half points behind seven three-pointers and were leading Century 50-29 at the halftime break.
Tko Westbrook and Teagan Scott set the tone for the Saxons in their opener. Offensively, they accounted for 33 points in that first half and helped anchored the defensive aggression that helped them to that sizable lead going into the second half.
“They set the tone with unselfish, they set the tone with pace and set the tone with defense. Once they did that, it was really easy for everyone else to follow through,” said South Salem Head Coach Kip Ioane.
“It’s all from practice, we take pride in this. We’re a small team, but we just got to play fast and if we play fast, it’s going to be hard to beat us,” adds Westbrook, who finished the game with 24 points.
Scott finished the game with 19 points, and Brett Gill contributed another 13 points in what would become an 85-52 victory to open the season.
The pace slowed down a bit for the Saxons in the second half, fatigue began to show, but South Salem did battle through that as they’ll look to play a full four quarters at the pace that they want to continue to play at this season.
“That’s what I got to do as a coach to get us to play to that standard, all 32 minutes, I think we did 20/22, which is enough for today. But when we’re playing other teams, the bigger teams, we got to lock in right after halftime,” starts Ioane. “But I’m really proud of them, all the guys who got in. Played as fast as we asked them to play. As unselfish as we asked them to play, it’s a good first game.”
South Salem heads to play Corvallis on Tuesday before returning home on December 13 against South Albany.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
