BALDWIN — For a team that hadn’t played a home game in more than a month, West St. Mary certainly played like they had never left home.

In a battle of unbeaten teams in District 7-2A and with first place on the line midway through the first round of district play, WSM got 17 points from Dondre Johnson, all in the first half, and 16 points from Tywan Polidore as the Wolfpack took the first half lead and pulled away for a comfortable 68-53 win to take over first place in district.

“We’ve only played three home games so far this year,” said WSM coach Gary Burrell. “They were ready to play at home tonight and give the home crowd a good show.”

West St. Mary, which entered the game on a hot streak of five wins in its last six games, jumped out to a 16-7 first quarter lead over its long-time rivals from right down La. Highway 182 and while Jeanerette briefly got the lead back down to under 10 points early in the second quarter, the Wolfpack were able to quickly build it back to double-digits and kept it that way the rest of the game to improve to 11-7 overall and 4-0 in district, one game up on second place Jeanerette (7-15, 3-1) and 1 ½ games up on Ascension Episcopal (2-1).

Oshay Phillips added 13 for West St. Mary and Daylon Richard added nine points for the Wolfpack, who step out of district play Tuesday at home against South Terrebonne before stepping back into district play Friday at home against Loreauville.

After starting district play with three straight road games, Burrell was happy to finally play a home game. It was only the third home game for WSM this season.

“We spent a lot of the early part of our schedule on the road,” said the WSM coach. “It was good to be able to stay home and pick up a win. Now we have a couple of home games ahead of us and our kids get the chance to play in front of the home crowd.” 

Shonathon Sparrow led Jeanerette with a game-high 18 points, including 12-of-13 from the free throw line, but only had four points in the second half. 

Burrell said that stopping Sparrow in the second half proved to be part of the what turned the game to the Wolfpack.

“It was important for us to stop Shonathon Sparrow,” said Burrell. “He started out playing well but when we switched from playing man to playing zone, we were able to take them out of their game and force them into doing something different.”

Jarred Drexler added 12 for the Tigers, but no one else had more than six points for Jeanerette.

“We just didn’t have a good night,” said Jeanerette coach Dwayne Alexander. “We didn’t have a good week of practice and we played tonight like we practiced.”

Jeanerette goes from one rivalry game to another as the Tigers play host to Franklin Tuesday.

The Wolfpack, who entered this season after reaching the Top 28 last season and falling in the semifinals to Madison Prep, have not had a problem resting on their accomplishments from last season. 

If anything, it’s only spurred them to make a run back to the Top 28 this year as well.

“We really haven’t talked a lot about last season because what that team did was special in going to the Top 28,” said Burrell. “But the kids look at what they did last season and this year’s team wants to continue what they built and take it further.”