WW South happy to be home again
It took Wheaton Warrenville South four minutes to warm up to its home court in Thursday’s girls basketball game.
Playing just their third home game of the season, the Tigers overcame a slow start to roar past Naperville North 66-42 in Wheaton.
“Yeah, it was weird,” Tigers coach Rob Kroehnke said. “Where are we going? Oh, we’re going home. Yeah, it’s nice to play at home. The kids are comfortable playing here, and you protect your home floor.”
It was also the first game in a week for the Tigers (19-3, 6-1), who started a run of eight games in 14 days leading up to the postseason, with all the remaining games in the DuPage Valley Conference.
Naperville North (14-8, 5-4) looked like it had an upset in mind when the Huskies took a 10-4 lead midway through the first quarter.
“I think we were just a little bit slow on defense,” Tigers senior Erin Zappia said, “but they were playing really well. I think we had it under control.”
“It took a little bit of time,” Kroehnke added. “We were struggling a little bit offensively. As soon as we figured out a few things about where we wanted the ball to go, we got a couple of fastbreak opportunities. Get some easy hoops that way, play great defense and good things will happen.”
The Tigers got comfortable with their surroundings and outscored Naperville North 24-5 over the next 12 minutes, leading 28-15 at halftime.
“I knew we’d have a little rust just right at the beginning of the game,” Kroehnke said. “As I tell the kids every game, you play great defense, good things will happen. To hold them to 15 in the first half, it’s amazing what these kids do.”
“We were a little bit unfundamental tonight,” added Huskies coach Jason Dycus. “We talked about it after the game. A lot of times you can learn from a loss. You can learn from a win and a loss, but I think we have to understand as a program, especially against the great programs — I mean Rob runs a great program and his kids are well-schooled — you have to be really fundamental against those teams. You can’t beat yourself.
“I think you have to get some quick, easy scores. We didn’t do that. We made it tough on ourselves tonight. We showed some glimpses, we showed some fight, but I think we gave up too big of a lead to come back from.”
It didn’t help that the Huskies got into early foul trouble that sent two starters to the bench.
“We’ve had a little bit of trouble with that, with getting some silly fouls,” Dycus said. “Once again, playing a great team, when two of your starters are on the bench, it makes it tough. I think we’ve got to learn from that. We can’t make silly fouls.”
The Tigers kept going in the third quarter, leading 36-17 after a Meghan Waldron basket. Naperville North went on an 8-1 run to pull within 12 points, but the Tigers pulled away again, scoring the final nine points of the third quarter for a 46-25 lead. The Huskies never threatened again.
Waldron finished with 26 points and 7 rebounds. Kayla Sharples was the leading scorer for Naperville North with 16 points.
Follow Orrin on Twitter @orrin_schwarz