By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.– West Salem’s Jon Breyman was on a mission Monday night against Sprague.  

He, like the rest of the Titans squad, remembered that January 18 evening at Sprague.  Remembering that 73-45 loss to the Olympians as Breyman scores 15 of his 19 points in the opening half of their 64-45 win.

It was the spark that the West Salem Titans needed with both teams kicking off the second half of Mountain Valley Conference play.

“It felt great.  We hit them in their mouths because that’s what they did to us last time, so it was nice to get revenge,” Breyman said. “I don’t know how to explain it, it feels good.  It’s a good confidence booster.  We just got to work on the little things, that’s all it is/  Just work.  You mess up in a game then fix it in practice.”

West Salem were clicking entering halftime, leading once 38-17 before going into the break up 38-20.

Sprague answered to open the second half with an 11-2 run, pulling to 40-31 of the Titans.  But the run was quickly extinguished by the 1-1-3 West Salem defense and, in turn, pushed their lead by to double-figures leading 50-34 in the fourth quarter.

With Summit Thursday at 6:30pm, the Olys need to find their groove once more that had them 9-1 in league play before this defeat to the Titans.  Wrapping up a tough three-game stretch that saw Beaverton on Saturday, West on Monday and the Storm coming up.

“The first half, yeah it was tough.  They came out with a new defense we haven’t seen before and it took some adjusting and they were up quite a bit,” Sprague’s Ryder Skogstad said.  “Third quarter we came back, had a good locker room talk and we came back.  Got it to single-digits at a time, but we didn’t have enough offense on that 1-3-1 or 1-2-2, it was pretty tough..they did a good job with that defense.

“Summit will be a tough one. so we got to give it our all.  We have nothing to lose  on Summit and we’ve had a pretty tough  three-game stretch right here, so it’s easy to get down…but you can’t let it affect you, you just gotta keep going.”

For West Salem, who were coming off a tough loss to Mountain View and a tough stretch, might’ve found their spark once more that had themselves 8-1 entering their first meeting with Sprague a few weeks ago. 

Perhaps, putting the bad juju to bed coming down the stretch and the 6A playoffs on the horizon that started from that January night. And a big thing will be their health as they’re getting healthy, returning two healthy key pieces in Brooks Ferguson and Breyman, all while connecting that with a good practice on Tuesday.

“One, we got to have a great practice tomorrow, so we’ll have a great practice tomorrow and just know that a team with a good record, we’ll beat because we were beating those teams earlier in the year,” West Salem Head Coach Travis Myers said.  “We haven’t done a great job of it since, but a big part of it is getting healthy again.

“Last time we played Sprague Brooks was out and he hasn’t played a lot of games and Jon has been sick a couple of times.  We’re back to our normal rotations which is big for us.”

Breyman finished with 19 points, Ferguson added six points in the win.  Tommy Slack scored 11 of his 14 points in the fourth quarter as the Titans host South Salem Wednesday night at 6:30pm.

Dallon Morganand Boston Ralston each led Sprague with 11 points and Skogstad contributed another eight in the defeat for the Olympians.  

Photos By Jeremy McDonald