Feb 10, 2018 5 min read

With the WPIAL playoff pairings set to be announced Tuesday, the Washington and Monessen boys basketball teams got an early taste of what playoff competition might be like.

Both teams went undefeated in section play and Saturday afternoon presented a late-season challenge for each other.

Monessen went on a big third-quarter run to break the game open, and the Prexies stormed back to cut a 19-point deficit to just three with four minutes left. But Monessen proved to be too much for Wash High, winning the non-section contest, 61-53, at Wash High gymnasium.

The win is the 10th in a row for Monessen.

“It’s good to play a team like Wash High late in the season,” Monessen head coach Joe Salvino said. “It was a good atmosphere to play in. They are a very good team and it is always intense here. They put a lot of pressure on you. I think it was a measuring stick of what we are going to have to overcome once the playoffs start.”

Monessen (14-7) broke open a 29-21 game at the half with a 19-8 run the first 3:35 of the third quarter to take a commanding 48-29 lead.

Lyndon Henderson had plenty of success getting to the rim and Cory Fleming made a pair of three-point shots during the pivotal Monessen run.

Henderson finished with a game-high 22 points and Fleming had 10.

“The third quarter is a big quarter,” Salvino said. “When you have a lead coming out of halftime, you don’t want to do anything to give them momentum to take into the fourth quarter. We did a lot of good things to build a big lead.”

The momentum Salvino referred to switched in a major way as the Prexies started to tighten on the defensive end of the floor.

Wash High (17-4) forced countless Monessen turnovers and started to score in transition. Before you knew it, the Prexies had put together a 20-4 run from midway through the third quarter until the four-minute mark of the fourth, cutting the Monessen lead to only 52-49.

“We know that our offense comes from our defense,” Wash High head coach Ron Faust said. “We didn’t work very hard as we should have in the first half. At the end of the game, we had a group of guys on the floor who just went full blast and all out.”

A problem for the Prexies in the first half was finding secondary scoring as Dan Ethridge (11 first-half points) and Zahmere Robinson (seven) scored all but three of Wash High’s points.

Jordan Swart took care of that problem in the second half as he scored 13 of his 16 points after halftime.

Robinson led Wash High with 18 points and Ethridge, who sat most of the second half, also finished in double figures with 13.

“We don’t go very deep on the bench,” Faust said. “And we had some guys who didn’t show up ready to play so I had to go with the group that did to finish the game and they played pretty well. The bottom line is, we can’t give up 61 points to any team and expect to win. We don’t have that kind of offensive firepower.”

The Greyhounds quieted the Wash High fourth-quarter run when a turnover led to a Henderson layup that put Monessen up 54-49.

Monessen put together a 7-0 run late to go up double digits again, 59-49, with less than a minute left.

“We just ran out of gas,” Faust said.

“The last quarter and a half I was very happy with the effort the guys on the floor gave. Before that it was real questionable.”

Both teams started slowly. Elijhwa Payne scored the Greyhounds’ first six points as they led 12-9 lead after one quarter. Payne finished with 12 points.

The game stayed tight until Monessen’s Fleming and Henderson hit back-to-back three pointers as part of a 9-0 Greyhounds’ run to take a 24-14 advantage, their biggest of the first half.

Henderson asserted himself in the second quarter, when he scored 10 of his 12 first-half points.

“We knew Wash High wasn’t going to quit,” Salvino said. “You build a lead because you do things well. Then when you stop doing those things well and stop taking care of the basketball like we did, a good team like Wash High is going to come back.”

The Prexies scored six straight points behind a couple of layups from Ethridge to pull to within 24-20, but they scored only one more point the rest of the half as Monessen took a 29-21 lead.

The loss ends Wash High’s 12-game winning streak as Faust knows they have work to do as the playoffs near.

“I’ve never really bought into the philosophy of a good loss,” said Faust. “I would rather win and play poorly than lose and play poorly. That makes it tough to build on something. Monday we are going to have to come away with something that motivates us heading into the playoffs.”

Monessen, which had its game Tuesday at Clairton end in the fourth quarter because of a brawl, will find out what punishment, if any, the WPIAL hands down when the board of directors meet Monday.