WESTBROOK – So much for expectations.

The struggling Westbrook girls’ basketball team threw convention out the window Wednesday night, topping Sanford 48-42 in a Western Class A tournament preliminary game.

The Blue Blazes had lost five of their previous six games. They lost to Sanford by 17 points in December.

None of which mattered.

“When we played them in the regular season, we had a rough game so I was going into it with the mindset of, ‘I want to win,’ but I was really nervous,” Ashlee Richards of Westbrook said. “I think we all went into it with a mindset of really wanting this. I got scared at a few times when they made a run but I guess that’s the game of basketball.”

The eighth-seeded Blazes (9-10), who will play top-ranked McAuley at 8:30 p.m. Monday in the quarterfinals at the Portland Expo, had cause for concern against the ninth-ranked Redskins (10-9) in the fourth quarter. But they always had an answer, often thanks to Richards.

She picked up her teammates’ missed shots and got easy baskets. She muscled her way in for a basket. She hit four foul shots and had eight points in the fourth quarter alone, 11 overall.

“Ever since I was little, I’ve been the bigger girl so I’ve been playing on the post. I’ve been adjusting to the wing. I’m not afraid of getting pushed around,” she said.

A Richards basket gave Westbrook a 43-36 lead with 2:47 left. But Sanford got a bucket from Samantha Adams and another from Heather LeBlanc to make it 43-40 with 1:34 to play.

Then Megan Niehoff hit an easy basket with 1:14 to play. The Redskins missed desperation attempts — and free throws — in the last minute as Westbrook iced it at the foul line.

“We knew it was going to be like that,” Westbrook Coach Christopher Aube said. “It’s Sanford. We see them a lot over the summer. We knew eventually they were going to get back into it. They made some nice halftime adjustments and we had to call a couple of timeouts. But we did a pretty good job defensively keeping them in check.”

Westbrook’s defense pestered Sanford all night. The Redskins didn’t make a field goal until the second quarter but stayed in the game because Westbrook picked up its seventh foul in the first quarter, sending Sanford to the free-throw line.

That the Redskins made a run didn’t surprise anybody.

“We played better in the second half. We came out and pushed to get closer,” Sanford Coach Kristy Parent said, “but it seemed like every time we had an opportunity, we scored and closed the gap, then they got an easy look. Or a couple times we did stop them and we just couldn’t put our shots in.”

 

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