Steal, Basket in Closing Seconds Help Manual Arts Top Westchester

Despite a lapse in the closing seconds of the game, Westchester High center Kelly Washington thinks that the Comets held their own against Manual Arts on Wednesday.

“The last 20 seconds, we played poorly, but our fourth-quarter game was strong,” Washington said.

Westchester’s play during the span, though, resulted in a 68-64 loss in a Southern Pacific Conference game at Manual Arts.

With the score tied 64-64 with 19 seconds remaining, Manual Arts’ Michael Stewart stole a deflected inbounds pass and scored the game-winning basket on an uncontested layup. Stewart followed a missed shot at the buzzer for the final margin of victory.

“It shouldn’t have come down to one play,” Westchester Coach Ed Azzam said. “There are a lot of ‘should haves.’ We should have set screens to get the ball in bounds. . . . We should have done a lot of things.”

Westchester defeated Manual Arts three times last season, including a 74-72 victory to end the Toilers’ six-season home-court winning streak.

“We haven’t forgot,” said Manual Arts forward David Rickenbacker, who had a game-high 22 points. “We owed them one from last year.”

Manual Arts (14-5, 3-0) led by as many as nine points in the first half over the two-time defending City 4-A Division champion. With four minutes to play, the Toilers led 59-54.

A basket by Ben Sanders cut the deficit to 62-60 with less than three minutes left, and Westchester (13-6, 2-1) tied the score on a dunk by Cullen Countee with 2:11 to play.

After Rickenbacker put Manual Arts ahead with a basket, Danny Walker made two free throws to tie the score at 64-64 with 1:45 left.

Walker had 18 points, including Westchester’s first 10 points of the second half. Cullen Countee added 13 and Sanders had 12.