Wheaton Warrenville South still perfect in DVC

Midway through the third quarter Naperville Central center Ben Wolf put down a vicious slam dunk and his teammates celebrated. But the play marked a rare moment on Friday in which everything did not go the way of host Wheaton Warrenville South.

While Wolf's dunk was impressive, the Redhawks' two points on the play were the only ones scored during a stretch of the second and third quarters in which Wheaton Warrenville South went on a 19-2 run. Naperville Central, which had jumped out to an 11-5 lead, ended up on the wrong end of 53-28 DuPage Valley Conference boys basketball score as the Tigers stayed perfect atop the league standings.

"I just think we got our feet going. We caught some wind," said Tigers forward Dillon Durrett, who led all scorers with 21 points. "Games can start off slow and we caught some wind and we started playing and doing what we do."

What they do is play great team basketball on both ends of the floor, and that's why they're 14-1 on the year and 7-0 in the DVC.

With the 6-foot-8 Wolf tallying 11 points, the Redhawks led 18-14 midway through the second quarter before Wheaton Warrenville South went on a 13-0 run to close out the first half.

"Credit to them. I thought the end of the second quarter was the key to the game," Naperville Central coach Pete Kramer said after his team dropped to 5-10 and 0-5 in the DVC. "They turned up the pressure. Their quickness, their defensive pressure just bothered us. We just fell apart. We just can't do that. We've got to have five guys all on the same page and we've got to keep our composure."

The Tigers, meanwhile, had another near-flawless night in which their five players seemed to work together perfectly.

"The chemistry between us, we all love each other and respect each other and know what we can do," said Dillon, who added 4 steals and 2 blocked shots. "It's not real hard to get going with this group of kids."

While the end of the second quarter may have turned the tide in the Tigers' favor, a 16-2 fourth-quarter run put an exclamation point on the solid effort.

"We were hoping that we could speed it up a little bit tonight," WW South coach Mike Healy said. "I don't know if we can do that every night, but tonight we got a lot of deflections. We were really active except for the first couple minutes of the game."

Dillon was the lone Tiger to score in double figures, but Chase Stebbins did score 9 including a key 3-pointer in the second quarter, and Drew Healy, Jake Healy and Parker Robinson each had multiple steals as the hosts' defense stymied the Redhawks.

"We had trouble with the press a little bit," said Wolf, who finished with 17 points and 3 blocked shots. "That got us flustered and we started making bad decisions. I think we made the most out of the ball when we got it across half court and we could set up, but we just struggled getting it across."