Girls Class B basketball: Putnam Valley shuts down Westlake late, wins championship 48-37
WHITE PLAINS — When Westlake and Putnam Valley played each other in the opening days of the 2023-2024 season they did so as teams in adjustment.
Westlake had nine new players after graduating 37 points per game from a team that had fallen to Put Valley in last year’s Section 1 Class B championship game.
And Putnam Valley had lost Eva DeChent and her 30-plus ppg and career 2,267 points to Division I Rhode Island.
Westlake came out on top in that December game 69-58.
But Putnam Valley wasn’t going to allow 69 points to Westlake Friday in their Class B championship rematch at Westchester County Center.
In fact, leading the Wildcats by only one point, 38-37, after Westlake sophomore Brooke Pfeiffer drained a 3, Putnam Valley didn’t allow another point for the game’s remaining five minutes and 41 seconds, en route to a 48-37 win.
“I think it was just our energy,” Putnam Valley senior Ava Harmon said of her team’s dominant last five minutes. “We knew our season was not going to end. We have faith in our team and coach. We’ve veen here before. We know what we’re doing.”
What it means
With the loss, fourth-seed Westlake, which edged No. 9 Pleasantville by a bucket in the semifinals, finished the season 15-8.
Second-seed Putnam Valley, now 16-7, will play the Section 9 Class B champion Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. at Yorktown High in a state regional semifinal.
Key moments
Westlake led 8-7 at the end of one quarter but was outscored 19-10 in the second as Tiger senior Jona Kabashi, who had a tremendous game on both ends of the court, hit from the inside and out, scoring 10 of her game-high 21 points.
Putnam Valley maintained that eight-point advantage, at 37-29, heading into the final quarter.
Class B tournament MVP Nai Torres had seven of her 14 points in the third quarter, two coming off a pretty, off-balance, one-handed score that became a 3-point play when she hit a follow-up foul shot.
But Westlake wasn’t going to go quietly.
After a travel call negated a Putnam Valley basket that would have made it 39-31 Tigers, an offensive rebound by Wildcat Margaret Plotkin led to an Olivia Celaj 3-pointer that cut the Tiger lead to 37-34.
A little more than a minute later after Kabashi hit a foul shot, Pfeiffer buried that 3-pointer to ignite the large, loud Wildcat student section.
But great defense, which included a steal by Brianna Foody, a block by Kabashi, a block by Ava Harman, two Kabashi buckets from the inside and a drive inside for two by Trorres increaseddPut Valley’s lead to 44-37 with 3:11 to play.
Westlake caught a bad break when Plotkin’s 3-pointer with 2:58 left wasn’t counted because Torres had committed a foul away from the play a second earlier.
Westlake’s next 3-point attempt missed and 30 seconds later it threw the ball away.
Put Valley put the game away with buckets by Leah Harman and Kabashi, Kabashi’s coming off her offensive rebound.
Other top scorers
Pfeiffer, who had a spectacular game-winning shot at the buzzer vs. Pleasantville, had another strong game and finished with 19 points.
Celaj also reached double figures with 13 points.
Foody had seven points for Put Valley.
All-tournament honors
Foody and Kabashi joined Torres on the all-tournament team, as did Pfeiffer and Celaj from Westlake, Croton’s Ava Andrews and Pleasantville’s Lexi Tomaselli.
Quotables
Westlake coach Sean Mayer said the fourth-quarter comeback took a lot out of his team.
“I just think the wind was taken out of our sails and they made a couple of good defensive plays,” he said.
Mayer, whose team played without its sixth man, Maeve Walsh , who was injured in the semifinals, also credited the Tigers’ three seniors, Torres, Ava Harman and Foody, saying they’d played like seniors.
But he was happy with his squad’s season, noting it had started 3-6.
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Kabashi said Putnam Valley, which began its season 0-4, changed its defense to a more effective high two-three after its loss to Westlake.
She said her squad had come out strong in the first half Friday, but it entered the third quarter as if the game were 0-0.
“We kept our foot on the gas,” Kabashi said.
Ava Harman, who’ll play field hockey for SUNY-Geneseo next fall, said her team had to change its offensive mindset after losing DeChent.
“Our offense did go through Eva a lot,” she said, noting her team needed to start passing the ball more and have everyone, including its underclassmen, step up to become more of a “collective” scoring team.
Put Valley lost two years ago in the state semifinals and lost in last year’s final despite having a big second-half lead.
After that game, Harman resolved things would be different this year.
“After that game, I said to the juniors, “We’re not walking away (from high school) without a state title,” she said, adding, “IWe have an amazing chance.”
Nancy Haggerty covers cross-country, track & field, field hockey, skiing, ice hockey, basketball, girls lacrosse and other sporting events for The Journal News/lohud. Follow her on Twitter at @HaggertyNancy
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Girls basketball: Put Valley takes Class B title 48-37 over Westlake
