West Forsyth’s girls needed a while to get it going in Lambert’s gym Friday, but once they did, a rivalry sweep quickly followed.

The Lady Wolverines got their second win over the Lady Longhorns this season with a nice defensive effort that resulted in a 64-40 decision.

West coach Dennis Benedict was happy with the win, but saw room for improvement after his girls limited the Lady ‘Horns to an average of 10 points a quarter.

“We still had some lapses where we didn’t get over on help side, which hurt us. I don’t know if fatigue was part of that or not, but it still could have been better,” he said.

West (13-8 overall, 11-3 Region 7-AAA) fell into a 6-1 hole early on and had trouble holding on to the ball in a first quarter that saw the Lady Wolverines give up eight turnovers.

By the end of the period, the visitors had fought back to force a 10-10 tie and wouldn’t trail again.

Benedict said things started clicking in the second half, when he started trying to free up Megan Whittaker (16 points, 10 in second half) with screens and playing more of a motion-based offense in general.

“We were very, I guess the word is tentative [early on],” Benedict said.

“We made an adjustment at the start of the third quarter, then they had to change their defense and that seemed to open up the game for us because we were standing around in the first half, which was not good and a credit to them because that’s what their defense got us doing.”

West was up 28-22 at halftime and led 44-30 after three quarters.

Whittaker helped out on defense as well, coming up with a handful of steals in the second half.

“We don’t preach the steals. We try to play postition defense so if we get them,  that’s good,” Benedict said.

Kelsey Turchi led all scorers with 22 points for West. Jenna Thompson joined her and Whittaker in double figures, with 14 points.

Jordan Hammer led Lambert (9-10, 2-6) with 12 points.

“I think their coach does a real good job. I went over and complimented their team because I think they play real hard for her and I think they’re an impressive group for this time and stage of their program. We really had to work to win this game tonight,” Benedict said.

The win followed up a 47-17 victory for the West girls against West Hall on Tuesday.