By Tim Mastro

WOODSIDE — With all the unknowns during this strange high school basketball season, the win or go home atmosphere of a state tournament game is still the same.

“It’s playoff time now,” said Polytech High coach Kyle Taylor. “We’re going to put the foot on the pedal and play hard.”

The Panthers came out strong in their opening round game to help extend their season at least one more game.

Jazmin Kellam led all scorers with 20 points as Polytech defeated Smyrna High 52-26 on Monday night. The 27th-seeded Panthers advanced to play at No. 6 Archmere on Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. in the second round.

Smyrna, seeded 38th in this year’s open tournament, finished its season at 4-11 overall. The Eagles were led by Deleon Foster, Megan Keller and Marie Youngcourt who netted five points apiece.

Freshmen Sky Naranjo and Tasia Smith contributed eight points each for Polytech (8-8). Jayla Scott-Coleman added seven points.

It was the third time this year the two Henlopen Conference rivals faced off. Polytech has won all three meetings, extending its margin of victory each time.

The first game was a five-point win for the Panthers, before a 13-point victory a month later. They doubled that margin on Monday.

“One of the biggest things we push on is staying course,” Taylor said. “The first game we played against Smyrna was still early in the season so we were working on different things, like rotations and spots and everything else. We wanted to develop everyone this year.”

With such a young team, the Panthers have five freshmen on varsity, Taylor was glad the DIAA found a way to have a season during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said it’s allowed Polytech to develop while still being focused on winning.

“Going into the beginning of the year, everything is up in the air, it gets pushed back and even after that it was still a question mark,” Taylor said. “It was definitely a back-and-forth beginning of the year emotionally.”

It was the second straight year Polytech won its first round matchup, which is the first time in a decade the Panthers have won at least one state tournament game in back-to-back seasons.

The second round game against Archmere (8-2) will be the first game for Polytech against a team from outside of the Henlopen Conference this year, due to the unique scheduling arrangement because of COVID-19.

“I can’t wait to go up North and show what we got,” Taylor said.