Balanced Cougars start fast, roll to win

Updated: March 23, 2011 9:16AM

West Side honored six of its senior basketball players in its final regular season home game Friday night against Hammond.

In a tune-up game before next week's sectionals, the Cougars (11-10) cruised to a 54-38 win. Ten of West Side's 12 players cracked the scoring column, led by Jovan Pullen's 11 points. Marques Wells had nine and Jonathan Black and Rashad Armstrong had eight each.

"We had nice, balanced scoring and we focused on our defense pretty well tonight," said Cougars coach Winston Garland. "We want to continue to focus on our defense, focus on getting stops and if we can continue to get points in the paint, we will be a tough team to beat going into the sectionals."

The Wildcats (10-9) jumped out to an early 4-0 lead, but that was their only lead of the night. They were shut out the rest of the first quarter, falling behind 12-4 at the end of one. Seven turnovers plagued the visitors in the first quarter and the Wildcats turned the ball over 21 times in the game.

Hammond broke an eight-minute scoring drought on a basket by La'Quon Clark with 5:15 left in the half. Clark scored the only four Hammond points of the second quarter.

West Side built a commanding 29-8 halftime advantage, fueled in large part by the Wildcat's 14 first-half turnovers.

The Wildcats tried desperately to get back into the game after the break, scoring the first six points of the third quarter, but a Wells trey stopped the momentum and the third quarter ended with a 45-19 West Side advantage.

The Wildcats once again tried to make a run to start the fourth quarter, led by Mike Peavy, who had 11 points on the evening, all in the fourth quarter to lead the Wildcats.

"They beat us from start to finish," Hammond coach Larry Moore said. "This is our third game this week, but you can't use that as an excuse. We need to get back into the gym tomorrow and just start putting up shots. I told the kids, win or lose, we just have to put this one behind us and focus on next week's sectionals."

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