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WW South tournament earning a reputation

In its brief history Wheaton Warrenville South's annual Martin Luther King Jr. tournament quickly developed a reputation for top-notch competition.

This season's no different, and the host Tigers are a main reason why.

The 16-team event begins Saturday and concludes Monday, with every team playing twice each day. In the bracket configured in much part by a vote by the coaches, WW South (15-1, 8-0 DuPage Valley Conference) earned the top seed.

"I don't think anyone expected what's happened," Tigers coach Mike Healy said of his team's incredible start. "We graduated 91 percent of our scoring and 87 percent of our rebounding, and you just never know what will happen."

The tops seeds, voted on in mid-December, are WW South, Bloomington, Oak Park, Homewood-Flossmoor, Benet, Notre Dame, Downers Grove South and Auburn. Other DuPage County participants include Glenbard East, Hinsdale South, Metea Valley and York.

There are five new teams in this year's field and four of them - Bloomington, Oak Park, Homewood-Flossmoor and Auburn - were seeded. Even though strong teams from last season left the tournament, Healy had no trouble finding talented replacements.

"We've had a run of really top-notch fields," Healy said. "I really like that we've gotten teams from outside our area. I think that's great to see."

Good morning:

One of the opening games of the WW South MLK tournament features Benet against Hinsdale South ... at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. After both teams play Friday night conference road games.

While Benet (11-3, 1-1) faces a key East Suburban Catholic Conference trip to St. Patrick, Hinsdale South (8-5, 3-0) travels to play Leyden in the West Suburban Gold. It'll be a quick turnaround opening a span of five games in four days.

"It's a big weekend," said Benet coach Gene Heidkamp. "It's a great opportunity to play a lot of great competition, but it's difficult to manage."

Benet plays St. Patrick at 7 p.m. Friday, and the Redwings should be back at their Lisle campus by 10 p.m. The team will have a walk-through at about 7:30 a.m. Saturday in preparation for the Hinsdale South game. After playing the Hornets, the Redwings will return to WW South for a 4 p.m. game against either Homewood-Flossmoor or Huntley.

The Redwings played three games in less than 24 hours once already at the Pontiac Holiday Tournament, but adding the two games on Monday truly will test Benet's depth.

"The most important game is obviously Friday because it's a conference game," Heidkamp said. "I'm sure we'll use more of our depth on Saturday and Monday."

Ready to finish:

Coming off a five-win season, Waubonsie Valley's least successful since a three-win campaign in 1992-93, the Warriors' 7-8 record entering Thursday's nonconference game in DeKalb looks pretty good. At least from the outside.

Inside, coach Jason Mead obviously seeks better.

"I think we could very easily have double-digit wins right now," said Mead, in his first year at Waubonsie after a successful five years at Dixon.

"The question that we still have to answer is, can we do the right things in pressure situations in order to finish games that we have enough talent to win?" he said.

"If we look at our eight losses, they're two by double digits but both those games we were down by 3 points at the end of the third quarter, and the other five losses we had leads in the fourth quarter. So, will we be able to actually complete games?"

The Warriors do have talent and experience with players such as three-year varsity man Brian Phillips, point guard Eric Cannon, mercurial forward Chuck Robinson and junior swingman Blake Blanzy.

Mead likes the consistency of returning guard Luke Gregorio and junior forward Kyle Schroeder.

"He's kind of a glue guy for us in the sense that when he's in a game you can pretty much count on us executing our stuff pretty well," Mead said of Schroeder.

The coach said the whole team has improved its skills over last season and he is pleased with their "buy-in," or acceptance of what Mead's asking them to do. That includes throwing them into late-game situations in practice to try to get the players to slow the game down.

"Now," Mead said, "we've just got to try to finish."

Weathering storms:

Like many teams, St. Francis (6-9, 2-2 Chicago Catholic League North) has sustained key injuries and needs input from reserves.

Starting point guard Tim Sullivan is lost due to the reaggravation of a knee injury. Spartans coach Erin Dwyer said at this point the senior is rehabbing for baseball season.

Guard Matt Cooney, St. Francis' second-leading scorer behind junior forward Andrew Harvey, has suffered arm and knee injuries. The knee injury was a weird one, a parking lot mishap where Cooney got pinched between two cars. That's healed, but then came the arm injury, which still affects him.

"He's not 100 percent but he's at least out there doing the best he can," Dwyer said. "He does a lot of good things because he's a floor captain for us."

Moving parts had to merge on the fly with St. Francis playing five games in seven days, from Dec. 22 against Marmion to four games at the Glenbard West Holiday Classic.

Dwyer said guards John Brundage and George Hamman "came off the bench and really sparked us."

On Jan. 6 senior Bryan Murray came in to hit a pair of 3s in a 48-41 CCL North win over Providence-St. Mel. Dwyer liked that a lot.

"From a leadership standpoint, as a senior you couldn't do much better," Dwyer said.

Follow Dave on Twitter @doberhelman1

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