By Zach DeMarcus
March 5, 2018
 
(PHOENIX) #14 Westmont Men's Basketball (24-7) fell short against #1 The Master's (29-2) in tonight's championship game of the Golden State Athletic Conference Men's Basketball Tournament. It was the Warriors' first trip back to the GSAC Championship game since they won it in 2000.
 
The Warriors had the lead at 21-19 with 7:15 remaining in the opening half. Back-to-back-to-back steals by the Mustang's Lawrence Russell led to two straight layups to give The Master's the lead. They would not concede that lead for the remainder of the contest.
 
Westmont was able to stay within six points of The Master's going into halftime despite shooting 8-30 (26.7%) to the Mustang's 13-32 (40.6%). The teams went to their locker rooms with the score at 26-32 in favor of the Mustangs.
 
Zac Jervis led the Warriors in scoring and rebounding with 18 points and eight boards. Jerry Karczewski and Olisa Nwachie both added 13 points in the loss.
 
Westmont head coach John Moore said, "I thought Zac Jervis was a warrior in the first half. He had five of our eight offensive rebounds in the first half just to keep us in the game."
 
Scott Keegan hit a 3-pointer for The Master's to kick off the second half scoring. Sean Harman followed with a jumper for Westmont. Brock Gardner then nailed a three to put the Mustangs up by 10. The Master's would go up by 11 points with the score at 36-47 with 13:28 remaining in the game.
 
Gardner led all scorers with 24 points and had a game-high 14 rebounds to complete his double-double. He was also tied for a game-high four assists in the contest.
 
"There's a reason The Master's is the number one team in the nation. We contained Brock Gardner and Timothy Soares in the first half. We contained Lawrence Russell in the second half. Bits and pieces of our defense were quite successful but we just couldn't sustain it for the whole game," said Moore.
 
The Warriors went on a run to cut the deficit to three over the next two minutes. Nwachie was fouled on a made jumper – he would hit the free throw to complete the and-one play. Jervis then laid the ball in followed by a made jumper by Timothy Soares for the Mustangs.
 
Karczewski hit a 3-pointer and Kyle Scalmanini followed with a layup to finish the run and bring the score to 46-49 with 11:02 remaining.
 
The Master's again went up by 10 four minutes later. Westmont responded with two layups from Karczewski and two made free throws from Nwachie to bring the score to 60-64 with 5:51 left in the game – that was as close as the Warriors would come to the Mustangs the rest of the night.
 
The Master's quickly went up by 12 after a 3-pointer from Darryl McDowell-White, and an and-one play from Soares – he added two more made free throws to put The Master's up 60-72 with 3:29 remaining.
 
Westmont looked to stage one last rebuttal when they were down by eight points with 2:40 left on the clock, but the Mustangs had other plans as they would go 10 for 16 from the free throw line over the final two and a half minutes of the game.
 
Moore said, "We played the way we wanted to for 37 of the 40 minutes. They had a four point lead with a little over five minutes left and that's exactly where we wanted to be."
 
The Mustangs went on to defeat the Warriors by a score of 88-73 to snag their second straight GSAC Tournament Championship.
 
Harman had a gutsy performance with his 11 points. He was in the hospital due to suspected food poisoning this morning. Moore said, "Sean Harman is just so tough. I think he had food poisoning after we played Hope. He was very sick all day Sunday and we finally took him to the hospital today. He got an IV and some antibiotics and left the hospital at 1:30 this morning."
 
As the Warriors are currently ranked 14th in the country, they expect to receive an at-large bid to the NAIA National Tournament in Kansas City. They will now wait until Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. to see the NAIA bracket reveal to find out who they will be paired up against.
 
"We have a lot to look forward to. I thought we played exceptionally well in this tournament. We played three very good teams. We'll build on this whole weekend. Kansas City is a great place for us. We've always looked forward to going and we've had a lot of success out there," finished Moore.