CB West uses strong defensive showing to get past Conestoga
DOYLESTOWN>> When you lose a tournament game in heartbreaking fashion, as Central Bucks West did in its previous matchup against Plymouth Whitemarsh, it can be hard to maintain the same intensity you had beforehand.
However, any notion of a letdown for the Bucks was quickly erased as they used a strong defensive performance to shut down Conestoga on their way to a 59-31 win in the District 1-AAAA playback bracket Tuesday night.
“We played well tonight and responded to last week,” CB West head coach Adam Sherman said. “I was very concerned about our energy level after losing to PW in the way that we did and didn’t want there to be a drop-off mentally and I thought the kids really kept their composure well.”
The Bucks were definitely the more energized team, and it showed from the opening quarter.
The Pioneers looked frustrated offensively, settling for deep, contested threes rather than trying to get much of anything going inside the arc. As a product, they finished with just four two-point field goals in the entire game, and shot an ice-cold 20 percent from the floor.
After trailing 15-9 following the first quarter, the offense continued to struggle to find it’s rhythm, going into the half down 31-17 and just looking out of sync.
“We didn’t look good and just didn’t look ready to play and they (CB West) did, and it showed,” said Conestoga head coach Mike Troy. “We shoot a lot of three’s usually but we need to do a better job of shooting them in rhythm within the space of our offense and we just didn’t do that tonight. You have to credit CB West for playing a really nice game.”
Conestoga guard Andrew Larkin was the only player on the team to reach double digits, notching 11 points with nine of them coming from beyond the arc, but the Pioneers needed more offensively to get it done and it just was not there on this night.
While the Bucks’ defense was busy locking down Conestoga’s scorers, their offensive unit was lighting up the scoreboard. West was lead by senior point guard Bill Power, who finished with a game-high 14 points and added five rebounds to go along with it, controlling the pace of Bucks offense for the better part of the night.
“We knew that the team with the most energy would come out on top and we were really fired up,” said Power. “We thought the game at PW was kind of stolen for us so coming back, at least to get the five seed for states would be huge for us.”
Perhaps most impressive about this win for West is the Bucks did it without leading scorer and co-captain Cal Reichwein, who has been sitting out the last two games with a knee injury.
Reichwein’s absence means that other players have needed to step up for the Bucks, and that’s exactly what happened on Tuesday.
“Other guys stepped up tonight,” said Sherman about his team’s offense without Reichwein. “Liam Cooney came in and gave us awesome minutes off the bench, Colin McAdams did the same thing, other guys stepped up. It’s a situation where Cal’s knee is still recovering so it was important for other guys to step up and they did a good job.”
Next up for the Bucks in the playback bracket is Spring-Ford, following their victory over Central Bucks East on Tuesday night, as they look to wrap up the 5th seed for District 1 going into states.
West has already played Spring-Ford, in it’s first game of the year to the tune of a 54-42 win, but that was over two months ago, and both teams have come a long way since then.
As for Conestoga, it’s season is still very much alive. The Pioneers still qualify for states, but this lose will hurt their seeding.
“The season definitely isn’t over,” said Troy. “We have another game in the playback so we want to go get that one and go into states on a positive note and see what happens in states.”
