Westminster falls to hot-shooting Ladue in MICDS 3rd place game

Facing the Ladue Rams for the second time in 16 days, the Westminster Wildcats came into the Mary Institute Country Day Holiday Invitational Tournament third place game looking for a better outcome than the 67-54 loss suffered two weeks prior.

Unfortunately for Westminster, the second time against Ladue didn’t go much better than the first on Saturday evening.

Top-seeded Ladue (8-3) broke to a 15-11 lead after the first quarter and broke the game open with an early third quarter run to blaze to a 64-45 victory over the struggling Wildcats.

Third-seeded Westminster slipped to 6-4 with the setback.

“They (Ladue) execute very well and when they have shooters knock them down like they did, they are tough to guard,” Westminster coach David Klyn said. “They share the ball every well with one another.”

Westminster got an early lead on a Grant Koby bucket to go up 11-9 with just under three minutes to go in the first quarter. Koby paced Westminster with 9 points.

Ladue responded in the second quarter as 6-foot-9 senior Austin Dague and 6-foot-7 forward Andrew Maddock combined for six points and the Rams took a 35-27 lead into the break. Maddock led Ladue with a game-high 16 points while Dague added 15 points.

Poor shooting hurt the Wildcats in the second quarter as Westminster missed several chances to be within two possessions.

“We had a few shots that rolled out and we couldn’t get them to go,” Klyn said.

The missed shots came back to hurt the Wildcats in the third quarter as a 9-2 run spurred Dague and Maddock pushed

Ladue to a 44-27 lead with 3:47 left in the third quarter. It was a hole that was too deep to get out of for Westminster.

“When a team comes out that quick on you and puts you down 13 points right off the bat it makes it tough to come from,” Klyn said.

Westminster ended up going 2-2 during the week at MICDS with wins over host MICDS (47-45) and Parkway Central (66-54) before falling to St. Louis University High in the semifinals Friday night (74-61) and then falling to Ladue in the third place contest.

Klyn noted that the week was a great barometer for giving his club chance to see where they stand at the halfway point of the season and the fourth place finish is a decent result for the club given the strong field.

“It was a great week just to kind of show us where we are at the mid-point of the season and show us where we need to improve and continue to build for the rest of the season,” he said.