Brookwood’s late 13-0 run buries Westfield in GIAA Elite Eight

MACON — Westfield (13-14) hung with one-seed Brookwood (26-3) for 25 minutes of Saturday’s GIAA Elite Eight matchup at First Presbyterian Day, but the Warriors decisively won the last seven in a 70-49 victory.

The final score was not indicative of the flow of the game. With 7:05 left in the contest the Hornets finished a 5-0 run to trail 46-41. The “away” side of the bleachers with at least triple the fans of its opposite roared to life as Westfield fought for a Final Four berth.

But Brookwood followed that spurt with a 13-0 run to fully put the game away.

“They changed defenses on us, and we let them be long in the passing lanes,” Westfield head coach Brett Hardy said. “We let one guy play two of us instead of making him commit…We just didn’t attack that 1-3-1 [zone] when they changed it on us. We tried to pass it more than get into the teeth of it with the dribble and find somebody else, and that’s the story of it.”

“You got to give them credit for changing to that, we just hadn’t seen it all night, just didn’t do a good job.”

Even as the Hornets stuck to Brookwood in the first half turnovers were an issue.

It wasn’t just the passing lanes, either. The Warriors blitzed handoffs and came away with multiple fast break scores. They pressured the ball and brought help when needed, and many possessions ended with Westfield scrambling to get back on defense.

The Hornets did well to dig out of an early 10-4 hole to take a 16-15 lead off of Hudson Hodge’s corner three-pointer a minute into the second quarter. They held it until the final minutes of the first half, and by the middle of the third Brookwood held a double-digit lead.

A principle factor in that, to pair with the turnovers, was second-chance points.

The Warriors, much like John Milledge Academy earlier in the week, were consistent in swinging the ball around and forcing Westfield to rotate. Again in a mirror of Wednesday’s game, the Hornets were late on some of those allowing rebounds and open shots.

“They do a good job of making you get into your defensive rotation,” Hardy said. “So then you get two on the ball…now you’ve essentially got two on one, somebody’s open and we just didn’t do a good enough job after the shot going and finding people against an athletic team that can rebound like them.”

“And we’ve seen that on video. They rebound very well on the offensive end, we just couldn’t get out of our rotations and get to the glass.”

UP NEXT

Westfield’s bumpy season is over, finishing with a 13-14 record and Elite Eight appearance. Brookwood advances to the Final Four at Columbus State University.