By Zach DeMarcus
November 21, 2017
 
(FULLERTON, Calif.) Westmont Men's Basketball (6-1) fell to Warner Pacific (Ore.) (5-3) by a score of 63-72. Westmont put together a late comeback, cutting their 20 point deficit to three, but they came up just short in the end.
 
Westmont head coach John Moore said, "I thought Warner Pacific was the better team tonight. I think the hardest thing to do in athletics is to have a good team lose by a large margin, and a good team win by a large margin and then play each other the next day. We looked like a team that was a little too full of ourselves."
 
Moore is referring to the Knights losing by 23 last night and the Warriors winning by 22 in their afternoon game yesterday.
 
"I thought we played well the first 10 minutes, had a seven point lead, then we just didn't play the way that we had been playing – I was surprised by that," said Moore.
 
The Warriors maintained the lead for the majority of the first half and were up by as much as seven at one point. They saw their lead slip away at the end of the half, and they never could regain it. Westmont lost the lead with nine minutes remaining in the first half, quickly regained it and then lost it for good when Warner Pacific's Brandon Bell hit two free throws with six and a half minutes left in the half.
 
From that point, the Knights went on a 13-7 run – this left Westmont with a seven-point deficit heading into halftime.
 
Westmont's defense held the Knights' offense to shooting 37 percent from the floor in the first half, but the Warriors' offense wasn't any better, shooting just 33.3 percent.
 
The Warriors defensive effort struggled in the second half largely due to foul trouble. Moore said, "All our big guys got in foul trouble. We got pretty thin in the middle pretty quickly – when that happens you're going to be in trouble."
 
Warner Pacific continued their run throughout the second half. They went up by as much as 20 with 9:20 remaining in the game. Westmont went on a 19-2 run over the next eight minutes, bringing the score to 66-63.
 
That was as close as the Warriors would come. The Knights scored a layup, going up by five with 43 seconds left. This forced Westmont to foul. Xavier Cannefax connected on both of his free throw attempts. Jerry Karczewski turned the ball over and was forced to foul, thus sending Morris Bethea to the line where he connected on his two attempts. This brought the score to its final at 72-63 in favor of the Knights.
 
Moore added, "They were leading by 20 at one point and we came back within three with a little over a minute left. I thought we showed a lot of fight at that point. That was nice to see.
 
"One guy that keeps coming to the forefront in that way is Kyle Scalmanini. He keeps showing a lot of fight out there and he does some really good things for us," said Moore. "I thought Olisa Nwachie had one of his better games for us tonight – rebounded for us and led us in scoring."
 
Westmont had 16 turnovers and only six assists on the night, which is a stark contrast to last night's ratio of 22 assists to seven turnovers. Moore thought, "I think this team is going to be dependent on having high assist to turnover ratios. Last night's game is a perfect example and tonight's game is a wrong way example.
 
"I think the comeback is something that we can build on and be encouraged by," finished Moore.
 
The Warriors get to enjoy Thanksgiving before heading up north to Atherton to play in the Bud Presley Classic Friday and Saturday. They will play Northwest Christian (Ore.) on Friday and Southern Oregon on Saturday. Both games are set to start at 2:00 p.m.