In what was a tightly contested contest for the first three and a half quarters, the Watchung Hills Warriors boys basketball team blinked first, allowing the Hillsborough Raiders to capitalize and come away with a 45-37 victory.
“We went cold again,” said Warriors’ head coach Justin Salton. “We didn’t knock down our shots, and we didn’t execute when we needed to.”
The Warriors, however, turned much of the game—particularly the first half—into a back-and-forth dog fight. The first half saw several lead changes between the two teams, and the Warriors found themselves neck-and-neck with the Raiders—Watchung Hills (1-2) was only trailing by a 23-21 margin heading into halftime.
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After winning the third quarter to reduce the Raiders’ lead to a one-point difference, the Warriors looked to capitalize heading into the fourth quarter behind the shooting of veteran leaders Steve Weidlich, Alex Hopwood and Mike Parkey.
Weidlich led all Warriors with 16 points for the game, while Hopwood and Parkey each contributed six apiece. However, three-point shooting didn’t work in Watchung Hills’ favor, as the team was a combined 6-for-20 from beyond the arc.
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The Warriors were also deadlocked with Hillsborough in rebounds throughout the game. Each team finished with 19 rebounds apiece, although the Raiders’ rebounding seemed to step up in timely fashion in the fourth quarter.
Hillsborough head coach Ian Progin knew his team was in for a tough task in a road game against a county rival.
“On the road, it’s difficult. You don’t want to give (Watchung Hills) any more advantages than they already have,” said Progin. “We had our guys handle the pressure.”
Devonn Foster led the Raiders with 21 points, while forward Matt Hornich contributed 11 points of his own for Hillsborough (3-0).
In order to avoid letdowns like this in the future, Salton will be paying extra attention to how his team practices heading into games.
“We have got to have good practices. We had a couple before our game against Ridge on Tuesday, and it showed during the game,” said Salton. “We had a bad practice yesterday, and we came out flat.”
Nonetheless, the Warriors will try to turn it around on Tuesday, Dec. 27 when they take on Summit. The game, which will be played in Summit, is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m.
