West Park boys fall to Destiny Christian

West Park's varsity boys basketball team hung with Destiny Christian Academy as best they could, but DCA won the battle of the cats on Thursday night, as the Lions defeated the Panthers 73-56. The Lions (2-0 in league, 11-5 overall) were essentially nine points better than the Panthers (1-1, 10-8) in both halves in their 17-point win. West Park trailed between six and 10 points for most of the first half and for 15 to 20 points in the second half before time ran out. West Park's biggest lead was 11-8 just about five minutes into the game, but the Lions finished the quarter on a 10-0 run to lead 18-11 after the first quarter. West Park, who struggled offensively for most of the evening, never could catch up. "Destiny Christian is a great team and a great defensive team," West Park coach AJ Roberts said. "They've got two bigs that make it tough to get to the basket, so they force you to shoot mid-range jump shots. We weren't as crisp as we wanted to be but I thought we ran our offense well enough to get some open shots and some layup opportunities. I give Destiny Christian credit though, they played well." Jaden Jackson led the Panthers with 13 points, while Parker Petracek and Brody Catanzarite both finished with 11. Marcus Miller chipped in with seven points. Frederick Blue III and Myles Wiggins both scored 20 points for the Lions, while Nick Andreotti Jr. came off the bench and scored nine points. "After the game I told the team I was proud of them," Roberts said. "They kept fighting all game long and played hard from the start. We did what we wanted to do defensively, but offensively, we've just got to get cleaner and give ourselves a better chance to score. We're leaning on our defense right now to keep us in games." West Park's next game is at Antelope on Monday.