Blue Knights run win streak to 7, romp past Eagles, 65-31

    MANCHESTER, NH — West High used a smothering defense to spark a 27-2 first-half run, en route to a 65-31 drubbing of visiting Kennett, Tuesday night at venerable Quinn Gymnasium.

    Max Houde had a game-high 20 points to go along with four steals to lead West, which won its seventh straight game to improve to 8-2 on the year.

    Jayden Jackson had 7 points to lead Kennett (5-3).

    The game was marred by an ugly incident, which caused the benches to clear with just over two minutes to play in the third quarter.

    Moments after West’s Treyvon Cannon-Bennitt was fouled while scoring on a layup, teammate Brayden Mariano was near mid court trading trash talk with Kennett’s Marquis Twomey. Things escalated quickly, with Mariano throwing a punch that landed flush on Twomey’s jaw.

    Kennett’s Tristyn Jones tried to go after Mariano but was restrained by a coach and a teammate. Mariano, meanwhile, was also quickly restrained by a teammate, who then brought him into the lockerroom.

    Twomey was shaken up but did not appear to be injured.

    When calm was restored, Mariano (12 points, 3 steals) had been hit with a double technical and ejected. The ejection will carry a minimum two-game suspension. That means West will be without one of its key contributors when it takes on Hanover (8-2) and Kingswood (4-6), over the next week.

    “The game was tainted by that, unfortunately,” said West Head Coach Rich Otis. “It happened, we’re not happy about it and it will be addressed,”

    The incident took some of the shine off what had been an outstanding performance by the West defense. The Blue Knights used a relentless man-to-man all over the floor that forced more turnovers (17) than it allowed points (14) in the first half.

    ”That’s how we play. We want to get up and down and force tempo,” said Otis . “We’re not very big but we’re fast and quick and we want to force tempo.”

    Cannon-Barritt and Max Houde had four steals each to lead the Knights. Tevin Edmunds added three.

    West took control of the game with a 10-0 run to close the first quarter to take a 17-7 lead. Edmunds started the run, scoring off a sensational feed from Cannon-Bennitt.

    Houde dropped in pair of free throws and scored on a sensational power drive, before coming up with a steal and feeding Christopher Mejia Vega for an easy layup.

    West settled matters by scoring 17 of the first 19 points in the second quarter to push its lead to 34-9.

    Houde drilled two of his three 3-pointers to trigger another 17-2 run to start the third quarter, making it 53-16.

    While a satisfying win, it was far from a perfect performance by West. They were outrebounded 39-27, something Otis said the team needed to improve on as it heads into a challenging portion of its schedule.

    “(Kennett) was getting two and three shots because we weren’t boxing out,” said Otis. “It’s something we talked about at halftime. We were fortunate because (Kennett) was missing a lot of shots in close.”


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