After a somewhat bumpy and uneven beginning, the Westfield boys’ basketball team settled down and played its game against a – to say the least – very green season-opening opponent.
Westfield opened Friday night at home against Barack Obama Green Charter High School, which is in its second year of existence.
The Blue Devils, who were able to move the ball around very efficiently once their offense settled down, had very little difficulty in rolling to a convincing 63-26 triumph.
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The Plainfield school - located on 209 Berckman St.- fielded just a junior varsity team last year that went 7-4.
The visiting Hornets, in their first-ever varsity game, actually produced small leads of 3-0 and 5-4 before Westfield went on a 20-0 run to close out the first period.
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The rest of the game pretty much served as a practice for the Blue Devils, who will have a much tougher go of it at Rahway Tuesday night.
“Considering the conference we’re in, it felt good just to get a win,” said Westfield junior guard Keegan Hess, who poured in 12 points, including a game-high two three-pointers.
With Westfield situated in the always-demanding Watchung Division of the Union County Conference and having to face Plainfield, Roselle Catholic, Linden, St. Patrick, Union and Elizabeth twice, the Blue Devils took advantage of moving the ball around against a team it clearly had a skill and experience advantage over.
“Coach tells us not to always look for the first shot, but the best shot,” Hess said.
Five different players scored in the first quarter for the Blue Devils, with Westfield able to get the ball inside quite a bit. It was often sophomore center Mike Androconis (6-3) getting the ball to junior forward Ozan Yucepete (6-6) and vice versa.
Yucepete, who played varsity only briefly at the end of last year after coming to the United States from Turkey, had seven points and three assists in the first quarter. He led all scorers with an 18-point effort that even included one three-pointer.
“Ozan’s still raw, but he’s got an inside and outside game,” said Westfield first-year head coach Daryl Palmieri. “He’s still learning to put it all together.”
Also scoring in double digits for Westfield was senior Aswad Turner. He came off the bench to finish with 10 points. Turner had six points and three rebounds in the first quarter and a blocked shot in the second. He wooed the crowd with a thunderous, left-handed dunk in the first quarter - off a pass from Yucepete - that gave Westfield a 19-5 lead.
“He’s very athletic,” Palmieri said. “He can really go up and grab a rebound, which is going to help us a lot.”
Junior guard Estevan Sullivan and junior forward Leon Johnson paced the Hornets with eight points, with Sullivan doing all of his scoring in the first half and Johnson netting six of his eight points in the second.
The Barack Obama Charter School serves grades 9-11, with a senior class to be added next year. The Hornets will play one more Union County opponent – Roselle Park – later this year.
“Our goals are to teach these young athletes the fundamentals of the game,” said varsity coach Mark Trachtenberg, who is assisted by JV coach John Prudente. Both coached the JV team last year and both will coach the JV and varsity teams this year. Westfield’s JV team defeated the Hornets before the varsity game.
Trachtenberg is a physical education teacher at the school and Prudente an anti-bullying specialist and in charge of the school’s security for the entire building. School enrollment now is just under 200 students.
“We also want to teach good court awareness and respect on the court,” Trachtenberg said. “We’re a team on the move that hopes to be a force to be reckoned with some day.”
“This was a new team that we didn’t know anything about,” said Palmieri, who was the head coach at Parsippany last year. “We just tried to treat it like any other game and tried to execute as best as we could.”
BARACK OBAMA (0-1) 5 8 7 6 - 26
WESTFIELD (1-0) 24 15 16 8 - 63
BARACK OBAMA HORNETS (26): 14-Nasir Clark 1-0-2-4, 12-Leon Johnson 3-0-2-8, 3-Jocquia Williams 2-0-1-5, 13-Estevan Sullivan 2-1-1-8, 5-Jovan Martin 0-0-1-1. Totals: 8-1-7-26.
WESTFIELD BLUE DEVILS (63): 2-Louis Molinari 1-0-0-2, 52-Tom Malley 1-0-0-2, 25-Quinn Dursee 1-0-0-2, 41-Al-Terriq Hooker 1-0-0-2, 10-Aswad Turner 5-0-0-10, 12-Keegan Hess 2-2-2-12, 23-Nate Mitchell 0-1-0-3, 35-Ozan Yucetepe 7-1-1-18, 51-Michael Androconis 4-0-0-8, 34-Dylan Elliott 2-0-0-4. Totals: 24-4-3-63.
