Tyson Delerme

HOLLIDAYSBURG — With the District 6 basketball playoffs on the horizon, the Hollidaysburg Golden Tigers got the type of overall team effort against an excellent Westmont Hilltop team on Friday night that they will be looking for in the upcoming postseason.

Hollidaysburg placed six players in the scoring column with at least five points, and the Tigers played shut-down defense on Westmont in a second half that Hollidaysburg ruled en route to registering a 51-34 Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference victory at the Hollidaysburg Area Senior High School gymnasium.

Senior forward Kasen Metzger led Hollidaysburg’s scoring with 15 points, and junior guard Tyson Delerme added 11 for the Tigers, who improved to 13-3 overall and 11-3 in the conference while dealing Westmont just its second loss in 16 overall games and 12 conference games.

Everybody who played a considerable amount of time over the first three and a half quarters for Hollidaysburg had a strong hand in Friday’s victory.

Delerme scored eight of his 11 points in the second half, which Hollidaysburg carried, 32-11 to wipe out a 23-19 halftime deficit.

Junior forward J.J. Stultz ignited the Tigers’ rally in the third quarter with a 3-pointer and two field goals as Hollidaysburg fashioned a 19-6 advantage in the third period to pull ahead, 38-29 after three stops.

In the second half, Delerme and sophomore Wyatt Frazier clamped down defensively on Westmont’s top two scorers, senior Jack Wesner and junior Owen Craig, who had accounted for all 23 of the Hilltoppers’ first-half points.

And senior forward Ben Zimmerman played a strong game in the paint for Hollidaysburg and also provided defensive help by stepping outside the perimeter in the second half to limit Westmont’s offensive game plan.

“When you get scoring that’s as balanced as what we had tonight, that makes a big difference in a game,” Hollidaysburg coach Brad Lear said. “I thought that we did a great job defensively in the second half in holding them to 11 total points.

“Putting in our defensive stoppers, Tyson Delerme and Wyatt Frazier, to guard their top two scorers was a big key for us in the second half,” Lear said. “Ben Zimmerman controlled the boards and also helped out defensively on Wesner and Craig in the second half. There are not too many teams who can effectively switch their big (man) to go outside and defend a point guard, but Ben did that for us tonight.”

It also helped Hollidaysburg that the Tigers rifled in nine 3-pointers in the game and made eight of their nine floor shots in their big third-quarter uprising.

Delerme ignited Hollidaysburg’s offense in the third period with a 3-pointer from the left corner to give the Tigers a 28-25 lead. Stultz followed with a 3-pointer from the right corner, and, after Wesner hit a driving layup, Stultz countered with two more field goals of his own, scoring a layup and getting a shooter’s roll on a try from the upper key, as Hollidaysburg opened a 35-27 lead.

After Wesner’s driving layup, Metzger drained a 3-pointer from the top of the circle to give Hollidaysburg its 38-29 advantage heading into the fourth quarter.

“Coming out after halftime, we knew that we would need to work the ball around, and we worked as a team and got points as a result of that,” Stultz said.

Westmont went stone cold in the second half, when the Hilltoppers converted only five of their 15 floor shots. But Hollidaysburg’s tenacious defensive effort had a lot to do with that.

“Defensively, we wanted to get outside on their shooters more in the second half so that they weren’t shooting 3’s,” Delerme said. “Their shots weren’t falling in the second half, and ours were, which was really good for us.”

Westmont Hilltop coach Dave Roman thought that Hollidaysburg’s defensive play was the key to the Golden Tigers’ second-half turnaround.

“They have very good length, their length gave us problems, and they played very good overall defense tonight,” Roman said of the Tigers. “They were making things difficult for us offensively, picking up loose balls off deflections, and our shots weren’t dropping in the second half.

“Credit to them — in the second half, they were making their shots, and we were not,” added Roman, whose Hilltoppers were led by Wesner’s game-high 19 points, 15 of which he scored in the first half.

Hollidaysburg, which made 12 of its 18 second-half shots and 18 of its 37 overall shots for a 48.7 percent clip from the floor, continued to build on its lead in the fourth quarter, outscoring Westmont, 13-5 in the period.

After Delerme and Metzger both hit 3-pointers, Metzger scored a field goal off an inside feed and Frazier hit a pair of free throws as Hollidaysburg’s lead ballooned to 50-32 with 2:35 left in the game.

Metzger had a game-high 14 rebounds, while Stultz corralled nine and Zimmerman five for Hollidaysburg.

It’s been a challenging but very productive week for Hollidaysburg, which has knocked off two previously once-beaten teams — Clearfield at home on Wednesday and Westmont Friday night — and will face a third team with only one loss Saturday afternoon, when the Golden Tigers travel to DuBois.

“We knew going in that this was going to be a pretty big week for us, and our kids have responded well,” Lear said.

WESTMONT HILLTOP (34): Valente 0 0-0 0, J. Wesner 5 6-6 19, Gartner 0 0-0 0, Craig 4 0-0 11, Bowles 1 0-0 2, Jashienski 1 0-1 2, B. Wesner 0 0-0 0, Hinton 0 0-0 0, Brownlee 0 0-0 0, Surloff 0 0-0 0. Totals – 11 6-7 34.

HOLLIDAYSBURG (51): Albarano 3 0-1 7, Metzger 5 2-2 15, Delerme 4 0-0 11, Stultz 3 1-2 8, Zimmerman 2 1-2 5, Frazier 1 2-2 5, Wolfe 0 0-0 0, Rhodes 0 0-0 0, Padamonsky 0 0-0 0, Steiner 0 0-0 0. Totals -18 6-9 51.

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Westmont Hilltop 10 13 6 5–34

Hollidaysburg 12 7 19 13–51

3-point goals: Westmont Hilltop 6 (J. Wesner 3, Craig 3); Hollidaysburg 9 (Metzger 3, Delerme 3, Albarano, Stultz, Frazier).

Records: Westmont Hilltop (14-2 overall, 10-2 in the Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference); Hollidaysburg (13-3, 11-3).

Officials: Bill Pfeffer, Sean Albright, Pat Hall.