Omaha Westside’s Jadin Booth has seen every kind of junk defense imaginable, so the tight face-guard Lincoln East put on the Nebraska-Omaha guard recruit was just business-as-usual for the 6-foot-2 senior.
After getting held down in the first half, Booth went to work and scored 20 of his game-high 26 points in the final two quarters to lead Class A No. 7 Omaha Westside to a 66-56 road win over the Spartans on Saturday.
“I don’t have to say a whole lot to Jadin, he can usually figure it out,” said Westside coach Jim Simons, whose Warriors improved to 8-3.
“Number 12 (Pal Dak) did a good job of face-guarding him (Booth) in the first half and they disrupted what we wanted to do offensively,” the coach added. “I felt like in the second half we did a better job with spacing and playing with pace. It’s tougher to face-guard when the ball is moving.”
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For the first 26 minutes, East (5-9) got enough defensive stops and hit enough key shoots to stay with the Warriors. East led 20-11 after one quarter, then survived a 12-2 Westside second-period run to take a 27-23 lead into intermission.
The lead exchanged hands four times in the third quarter before a three-pointer by Booth, a third-team Super-Stater a year ago, broke a 37-37 tie and helped propel the Warriors to a 42-39 edge heading into the final eight minutes.
East’s last lead came at 45-44 with 6:25 left after a three-point play by Jett Janssen, a 6-5 senior who hurt the shorter Warriors inside with 14 points and 10 rebounds.
A three-pointer by Carl Brown with 5:07 remaining put Westside in front to stay. But it was an 11-0 run that finally allowed the Warriors to pull away, a spree capped by a three-point play from Booth that made it 61-49 with 1:48 remaining.
“In the second half, we knew if we wanted to push the lead, we had to turn it up defensively, and that would lead to more offense,” Booth said. “We were able to get some stops, force some turnovers and get out in transition.”
Westside had three others in double figures — sophomore Chandler Meeks with 14, senior PJ Ngambi with 11 and sophomore Reggie Thomas with 10.
Dak, a 6-2 senior, also scored 14 points and hit 4 of 5 three-point shots in addition to his defense on Booth. Junior guard Carter Glenn added 12 points.
“I thought our kids battled hard and didn’t back down, but in the fourth quarter we had back-to-back turnovers in the open court that led to a couple easy baskets, and that really helped their (Westside) defense,” said East coach Jeff Campbell, whose team lost at No. 3 Omaha Central on Thursday.
“I feel like we’re making progress in terms of getting more good possessions and cutting down bad possessions,” Campbell added. “We just need to do it for 32 minutes.”