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Westminster's Carani hits 1,000 mark in win over Harvest

After all the injuries Westminster Christian's Sam Carani suffered during his freshman and sophomore seasons, the senior basketball player didn't think his career would come to a point where he'd reach the 1,000-point plateau as it did Saturday.

But the 6 minutes he sat out in the second quarter might have been the toughest to play during his 4 years at Westminster during the Warriors' 61-35 Northeastern Athletic home win over rival Harvest Christian since Carani, who opened with a 6-point first quarter, sat on 998 career points until the 6:01 mark of the third quarter when he received a lob from Scott Graziano out of the right wing as he cut toward the left block with Westminster up 19.

"I was just thinking about it the entire time," Carani said of his benchmark point that flushed off the left angle of the glass. "It's exciting to see all the hard work pay off all four years of coach (Bruce Firchau's) intensity. Definitely come a long way, it's exciting."

Carani was visibly more comfortable thereafter, as he drained a 3 from the top of the arc on the next Warriors' possession to finish with 11 points to go with 3 rebounds and 1 assist. The 6-foot 4 forward who was a 2014 Fox Valley all-area soccer selection in the fall became the eighth Warrior in boys history and 11th player overall to obtain the honors that Firchau lightheartedly put a spin to.

"Well anybody who puts up with me for four years deserves all the accolades they can get," Firchau chuckled. "I'm sure there was a lot of adrenaline flowing through him tonight."

But there was much to go around as the fast-paced, high octane-style the Warriors came out with gave Westminster (13-4, 7-0) its fifth-straight win by racing out to a 20-8 lead by attacking the hoop and capitalizing on 7 Harvest (9-10, 1-4) turnovers in that span.

"I think the way we played tonight is how we have been playing, we're very unselfish we get a lot of offense generated with our defense," said Firchau, whose team has won its last 5 games by a margin of 29.2 points. "We moved the ball well. We've been pushing it up pretty good."

Point guard Dillion Rejman, who Firchau admits has the best court vision of anyone in the area, led the Warriors with 13 points while Robert Kleczynski added 10 to go with 3 steals. Rejman's lone steal led to a layup and a foul with 2:05 left in the first quarter for a 16-6 lead. It was 1 of 6 first quarter layups which did not stop throughout. Eventually Rejman got hot from deep with one 3 making it 35-18 in the second while his last put Westminster up 47-20 with 4:35 in the third.

"I think the team is having fun playing right now, they're doing things well on both ends of the court," Firchau said of the team's 10 steals and 25 forced turnovers that led to 16 points. "We caused a lot of havoc on our deflections. In the third quarter we really shut them down."

That's when Harvest accounted for just 3 points. The closest the Lions ever came was when coleading scorer Noah Fox sank a floater with 3:20 left to make it 10-6. Fox and Riley Steiner both finished with 8 points 0as Harvest shot at a 34.6 percent clip.

"They did what they wanted and we didn't show up to play basketball," Lions' coach Scott Cork said after his team's second-straight loss after it had won 7 of its last 9. "It seems nights we have it and nights we don't. I'm not sure what we're missing or if the guys aren't being confident."

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