Edgewood boys basketball coach Gregory Gilmore said he hoped last year’s CIF-Southern Section playoff run to the semifinals would give this year’s team even more motivation to advance to the championship game.

But the Lions were out-of-sync on offense from the beginning as Western imposed its will early and often to cruise to a 55-33 win on Tuesday night in the Division 4A semifinals.

Western (18-9) will play at Dos Pueblos on Friday night for the championship.

Edgewood’s season isn’t over. The Lions (25-6) will begin play in the state playoffs next week.

“I give a lot of credit to Western,” said Gilmore. “They played us well defensively. But it was uncharacteristic how we played.”

The Pioneers held Edgewood to its lowest scoring total of the season and snapped the Lions’ eight-game winning streak.

“It took a while for us to trust the system we built playing defense first,” said Western coach Marc Harrison whose team has now won eight games in a row and 14 of its past 15. “I was a little more offensive oriented. Sometimes we didn’t believe we could win just playing defense. As the season has gone on (the players) started to buy in. The more we had success the more we decided to defend.”

It was clear early Western’s defense would be tough. Edgewood missed its first several shots and didn’t score its first points until 3:07 left in the first quarter when Nicholas Dien hit a 3 after Western raced out to an 8-0 lead to open the game. Dien later hit a layup toward the end of the quarter for the only other points in the period for Edgewood.

The Lions trailed 14-5 at the end of the first quarter but cut the lead to 14-10 early in the second after Jaelin Brown hit two free throws. The game got no closer. Western went on an 8-0 run to take a 22-10 lead. The Pioneers extended that lead to 31-16 at halftime.

A big reason for that lead is that Western forced Edgewood into 11 turnovers in the first half.

“Too many turnovers,” Gilmore said. “Guys just not understanding when to go backdoor. We were still trying to make passes when guys weren’t open.”

Western started to pull away even more in third quarter thanks to a 10-0 spurt that put the Pioneers up 43-20 with just over two minutes left in the period. That lead grew even more when Orange League MVP Ahmad Hammouri stole a pass for a slam dunk then hit a baseline 3 less than a minute later as the quarter ended to put Western up 48-22.

Hammouri finished with a game-high 22 points and pulled down 16 rebounds.

Western grew its lead to 55-24 in the final quarter before slowing down.

Aside from Hammouri, Western was led by Jameson Labasan who was the Pioneers’ sparkplug early as he scored 11 of his 15 points in the first half. Alessandro Burns added 10 points and seven rebounds.

Edgewood was led by Dien who scored a team-high 16 points. He scored 14 of those in the first half and was held in check by Western’s defense in the second half. No other Lion scored more than four points. DJ Hill is usually a consistent scorer but was held to just two points.

“It just wasn’t his night,” Gilmore said of Hill. “Normally, he’s a pretty reliable shooter.”

Gilmore said his team will bounce back and prepare for the state playoffs.

Western is making its first boys basketball championship appearance.

“Just getting (to the semifinals) was great,” Harrison said. “But I told (the players) we want to finish. We didn’t want to just leave in the semifinals and be satisfied. They showed up and did what they were supposed to do. I was really proud of the effort.”