By Zach DeMarcus
November 16, 2017
 
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) Westmont Men's Basketball (5-0) defeated Westcliff University (0-9) this evening, winning by a score of 92-53. Westmont spread out their minutes sending 12 players to the court – 11 played 10 or more minutes.
 
Westcliff came out of the gate hot and went up 7-0 to start the game. Westmont responded with a 14-0 run over the next five and a half minutes. Gyse Hulsebosch hit a three to get Westmont on the board. Ben Okhotin went up for an offensive rebound and a put back, Sean Harman hit a three, David Gunn hit a two point jumper followed by two free throws, and Zac Jervis hit a jumper to finish off the run.
 
The first half continued to be all Westmont's, Jerry Karczewski finished the half with 13 points in his 11 minutes and Westmont went to the locker room up 41-19.
 
Westmont head coach John Moore said, "I thought Jerry did a really nice job in the first half keeping us on top. I thought in the second half, the guy who stood out to me was Kyle Scalmanini. He had five steals and seven assists, he didn't score a lot but he had a big impact on the game."
 
Westmont shot 46.9 percent from the floor in the first half and improved upon that number in the second half shooting 65.5 percent and going 41.2 percent from behind the three point line.
 
Maxwell Hudgins went four of nine from beyond the arc and finished tied with Karczewski with a game high of 16 points. Moore said, "I think it's fun to see Max get his shot going a little bit. Anytime you get 11 shots up and nine of them are threes and you can shoot at a high percentage like Max did that bodes well."
 
Westmont looked to play well against a team in Westcliff that has had a rough start to the year.
 
"I think the one area that we didn't respond well was in our passing, we had 20 turnovers tonight," said Moore. "Conversely, we had 21 assists. Whenever you can rebound the ball at the pace that we rebounded tonight you're in good shape – we've done that well. "We got to the free throw line and we've continued to try to emphasize that. You could see our guys attacking the basket more and shooting a few less threes when we got down. We tried to get to the rim a little more."
 
Westmont was up by as much as 50 in the second half when the score was 87-37, both teams exchanged blows to bringing the game to a close with the final score 92-53 in favor of Westmont.
 
Westmont heads to Fullerton next week for the Hope Classic, playing La Sierra University on Monday and Warner Pacific (Ore.) on Tuesday. Both games have a 3:00 p.m. tip-off. They will then head north to Atherton to play in the Bud Presley Classic. They will face Northwest Christian (Ore.) on Friday and Southern Oregon on Saturday. Both games are set for 2:00 p.m.