East Webster comes up short to Class 5A power Saltillo

Most basketball coaches don’t want to talk about moral victories.

Wins only count when you come out on top on the scoreboard.

East Webster head coach Michael Seger is no different. but there was still a sense of pride in the leader of the Wolverines on Tuesday night after his team fell 62-57 to Class 5A power Saltillo.

“I told our guys that we’re not happy after a loss because I really felt like we could have and probably should’ve won the game, but, we don’t want to lose sight of what we did do, and that’s take a team that is very deserving of their high rankings down to the wire and have a shot to win the game," Seger said. "I was proud of our toughness. We went toe-to-toe with them all game. We went man-to-man with them the whole game, despite them having better athletes and more quickness. I thought we were just tough. We did a great job on the glass and that’s what gave us a chance to win.”

East Webster (14-4) looked for much of the night like a team destined to pull the upset over Saltillo (20-1). The Wolverines got a 20-point performance out of Isaac Patterson, Art Thompson scored 13 and Sedrick Taylor tallied 12 to power East Webster offensively.

Those three and their Wolverine teammates played solid, all-around basketball early and sprinted out to a 20-12 lead over Saltillo by the early moments of the second quarter. Finally, the Tigers showed why they are one of the state’s best groups. In the middle portion of the second quarter, Saltillo went on a 10-0 run and held East Webster without a field goal for almost 5 minutes of game action.

By halftime, the Tigers were sporting a 26-24 lead.

Still, the Wolverines kept fighting.

Early in the third quarter, Patterson, Thompson and Taylor combined to put East Webster on a 10-0 run of its own. Suddenly, the Wolverines were back up 34-29. However Saltillo answered by scoring 13 of the quarter’s final 17 points and East Webster trailed 42-38 entering the final period.

Both teams traded blows in the fourth quarter. Even after Saltillo grabbed a seven-point 56-49 lead with just 2:27 to go, East Webster scored five unanswered points on a Thompson basket and a Taylor trey.
Just like that, the Wolverines were down only two.

East Webster got no closer though. Despite an effort that Seger couldn’t help but enjoy, the Wolverines were left to wonder what might have been, even as they accepted the positives from the evening.

“I feel like we did a good job holding some of (Saltillo’s) better guys down, but we also made a couple turnovers that, if we score instead, makes it a whole lot more interesting, but we executed and did a lot of good things so we’re definitely going to build off of this and hopefully do better going forward," Seger said.

Girls Game
Saltillo 49, East Webster 32

East Webster scored just eight points in the second half as Saltillo proved to be too much in Tuesday’s opening game.

The Lady Wolverines (10-9) trailed only 29-24 at halftime before fading down the stretch against the Lady Tigers (9-12).

East Webster was hampered by missed free throws. The Lady Wolverines made just five of their 18 shots from the charity stripe. In addition, Seger saw his team’s shots from the field simply not fall.

“I felt like we had lots of good shots and got lots of good looks, but nothing would go in,” Seger said.

Seger did find a silver lining in his team’s effort.

“I felt like, better than anytime all year and maybe my whole time coaching girls, that our team kept fighting when things weren’t going their way,” Seger said. “They were energetic. They were guarding. We held their best player (Kenzye Simmons) to six points, but they had a freshman (R’reanna Bobo) step up and score 20. We gave ourselves a chance. I’ll take my chances with a lot of the looks we got. Hopefully, we’ll make more of them going forward.”

Jaden Johnson led all East Webster scorers with seven points in the game.