Johnston scored all 10 of his points after halftime, and also helped lift West Marshall to a 52-46 win over Saydel at West Marshall High School.

“Cash is awesome at putting himself in good positions to get good looks,” West Marshall head coach Kory Hobbs said. “He’s just been struggling to get some of them to go down this year.”

Twice in the final two minutes, Johnston got buckets to drop in to keep the Trojans a step ahead of Saydel, including a 3-point play with 1:07 left to push West Marshall’s lead to 48-42 at the time.

“That felt great,” Johnston said. “It felt good to finally see one go through, especially an and-1 in a key moment of the game that really put us over the top from an energy standpoint.”

The Eagles got an answer on a Jacob Oltmanns 3-pointer but after a timeout, the Trojans drove down the court and got a bucket from AJ Dee to push the lead back to five. The Eagles got one back on a free throw to make it 50-46 but Lucas Barnes scored again on the other side and Saydel didn’t have an answer from there.

“The guys really made it an emphasis to try to get the ball inside,” Hobbs said. “Whether it was by dribble-drive, post touch, really emphasizing working inside out and when you get a couple layups, the three-pointers opened up for us and we hit a couple of those, too.”

The win snaps a three-game winless streak for the Trojans, improving to 3-3 overall and 2-2 in the Heart of Iowa Conference. Saydel had won the last three meetings between the teams by a combined 16 points.

AJ Dee led the Trojans with 15 points and Noah DeSotel also had 10 points; Barnes finished with nine.

Dee had seven points in the third quarter to help the Trojans erase a 25-18 halftime deficit that was as big as 10 points earlier in the second quarter.

“AJ had a hell of a game,” Johnston said. “He got some big shots in that second half that got us over the hump. … We just trusted each other. We’re so close and I think we relied on that, knowing that we were going to be OK and just outtough them.”

West Marshall heads to South Hamilton for the final game before holiday break on Dec. 20.

“We’re a better team than we were at the start of last week,” Hobbs said. “We’ll continue to grow in a lot of areas and really work on honing in our discipline, making sure that we’re sticking to our style of basketball and getting really good at the little things.”

West Marshall 52, Saydel 46

SAYDEL (2-2, 1-2) — Gage Moreno 3 2-2 9, Brady Hicks 2 9-10 13, AJ Ollin 5 0-2 10, Jake Oltmanns 1 0-0 3, Gunner Vanderpool 0 0-0 0, Landen Soma 1 0-0 3, Adam Mein 1 1-2 4, Trevor Goode 2 0-0 4. TOTALS 15 12-16 46.

WEST MARSHALL (3-3, 2-2) — Caden Pfantz 1 0-2 2, AJ Dee 6 2-2 15, Evan Siegert 0 0-0 0, Jace Eich 0 0-0 0, Lucas Barnes 4 1-2 9, Noah DeSotel 4 2-2 10, Cash Johnston 4 1-1 10, DJ Ridout 2 1-1 6. TOTALS 21 7-10 52.

SAYDEL 9 16 5 16 — 46

W. MARSHALL 6 12 19 15 — 52

3-Point Goals–Saydel 4 (Moreno, Oltmanns, Soma, Mein), WM 3 (Dee, Johnston, Ridout). Team Fouls–Saydel 10, WM 16. Fouled Out–Ridout.