BENSON -- Be it the Senior Night atmosphere, the conference rivalry matchup or the nothing-to-lose approach, but West Johnston gave visiting Clayton all it could handle Tuesday night in a Greater Neuse 4A Conference boys basketball meeting.
The second-place Comets eventually pulled away from 3-17 West Johnston down the stretch for a 53-42 victory, but the Wildcats didn’t make it easy.
“(West Johnston) played hard,” said Clayton coach Denny Medlin. “We came out and acted like it was going to be easy, and that’s what happens.”
West Johnston clung to a one-point lead at halftime and trailed just 35-33 heading into the fourth quarter but the Wildcats went cold at the worst time.
“The kids play hard and they’ve got a lot of positive energy,” Wildcat coach Kris Bennett said. “That’s indicative of what we’ve done all year long.”
The Comets held West Johnston scoreless for nearly the first five minutes of the final period as Clayton opened up its biggest lead of the game at 42-33.
“They put the 1-3-1 press on us and I thought we got some good shots against it. It did exactly what it was supposed to do,” Bennett said. “We got good looks. We just didn’t make the shots.”
Clayton (16-5, 10-3) outscored the Wildcats 18-9 in the fourth quarter with 10 of those points coming at the foul line.
“We went to a zone and we got just enough stops to get a lead but I wouldn’t say we really did anything extraordinary defensively at all,” Medlin said.
For the game, the Comets made good on 19 of 33 free throws while West Johnston hit just four out of 10.
“We just let them get to the free throw line too many times,” Bennett said. “Too many fouls and too many chances for them to score with the clock stopped.”
West Johnston (2-11 in conference play) led 16-15 after the first quarter and 27-26 at the half. The Wildcats’ last lead was 29-28 at the five-minute mark of the third quarter.
Clayton’s Gary Clark led all scorers with 26 points that included a pair of fast break slams and a 10-for-15 effort at the line. Anthony Gaskins helped out with 12 points for the Comets.
Clayton failed to connect on a single 3-pointer all night and settled for 13 of its 16 buckets in the paint.
“You try to make sure their 3-point shooters don’t get too many free looks at the basket. They’re a very good shooting team,” Bennett said. “You want to just keep (Clark) in front of you and make him shoot over top of you. He had a good game shooting the ball.”
Darius Williams paced West Johnston, which honored nine seniors before the game, with 12 points of his own.
