Wash High still rolling, dominates McGuffey
By Joe Tuscano
For the Observer-Reporter
newsroom@observer-reporter.com
A little bit more than a month ago, the WPIAL basketball playoffs — PLAYOFFS — seemed out of reach for Washington High School’s boys basketball team.
The Prexies had lost the first five games of the season and there was no happiness in town. What in the world of Frank & Lock was going on with this apparently talented team?
With the next game at the always difficult McGuffey, and the Section 4 Class 3A set to begin, Washington came through with a 50-48 victory in overtime and everything changed.
Wash High hasn’t lost since.
The ninth straight victory of the season came Saturday afternoon in a 64-36 Mercy Rule rout of the Highlanders.
Washington holds first place in the Section 4 standings. Suddenly the losses to Trinity, Canon-McMillan, Uniontown, Elizabeth Forward and South Allegheny appear to be in the rear-view mirror.
“We’ve matured since that (overtime) game (against McGuffey),” said Washington basketball coach Ryan Bunting.” We’ve matured on offense and we’ve matured on defense. Especially, in the way we got defensive rebounds and we paid attention to detail. We didn’t get caught up in all the theatrics. We played a clean game. So we didn’t give them many different ways to get back in the game. To me, that was the major difference between this time and last time.”
Ruben Gordon led the Prexies with a 17-point effort. Braidon Wise and Zxavian Willis each tossed in 12 points. Will Callan chipped in with nine points.
Gordon was effective at both ends of the court. He scored, found open players underneath for easy layups, blocked a handful of shots and pulled down a number of rebounds.
“This is the ninth win in a row,” said Bunting. “When you win, you become a little more confident. And you want to play with more attention to detail. It’s hard when you lose five in a row to pay attention to detail. We don’t talk about the streak. They know it. Just like they know when they are on a five-game losing streak.”
Washington took control of the game at the end of the first and second quarters and the opening of the third. Two layups by Gordon helped the Prexies take a 16-8 lead at the end of the first quarter. McGuffey came on at the end of the half but a layup and putback by Willis stretched the Prexies’ lead to 36-21 at halftime. A 6-0 run to start the third quarter pushed Washington out to a 42-21 lead.
“They beat us in every aspect of the game, offense, defense and they outrebounded us,” said McGuffey head coch Mike Fatigante. “It’s impossible to win games when you get beat in all those categories.”
McGuffey, which fell to 2-4 in the section standings, hosts Mt. Pleasant Monday. Washington, which is 6-0 in the section, travels to Charleroi Tuesday.
“It’s only one game,” said Fatigante. “We have plenty of time to bounce back. We just have to be better in every category.”
Grayson Wallace led the Highlanders with 14 points. Aydan Cunningham added 11.