WW South dominates Wheaton North from start to finish
The usual hard-fought, tight girls basketball game between cross-town rivals Wheaton North and Wheaton Warrenville South never materialized Thursday night.
WW South made sure of it.
The Tigers scored the first 12 points of the game and soared to a resounding 48-21 home victory.
"I'm very happy, so happy," Tigers junior MacKenzie Stebbins said. "We wanted this more than anything. It was really good for us."
The lead reached 27-6 with 2:01 to go in the second quarter on a Kylie Ruggles 3-pointer off a Paige Miller assist. The Tigers (11-2, 6-2 DuPage Valley Conference) led 31-8 at halftime.
The Falcons (8-2, 4-1) - who won the teams' first meeting this season 46-35 on Nov. 30 - didn't have a second-half comeback in them. The Tigers made sure of that too.
"(Kroehnke) said to us they're going to come out with fire so you need to be ready for that, and we were. We showed it," Stebbins said.
"It was one of those where you need to get that mindset ready with your kids because they're not going to lay down. You know they're not," Tigers coach Rob Kroehnke added. "So if you can withstand that initial couple of minutes and set the tone for the second half, OK. But you let them come out and score the first 9 points, well now you've got yourself a ballgame."
Another Ruggles 3-pointer with 1:03 to go in the third quarter made the score 40-10.
"We couldn't get into anything we wanted to do," Falcons coach Dave Eaton said. "We weren't able to pressure the ball like we normally do, and their kids handled it well. Credit goes to them. They absolutely dominated."
It was the ninth time this season the Tigers have held an opponent to 30 points or fewer.
"We had a new game plan for today and it worked really well," Stebbins said. "The fact that we kept them to 21 was really nice for us."
"They're a great team. I mean they're a really good team," Kroehnke said. "You've got to do everything right. Tonight we did just about everything right. The stats at half were unbelievable."
Wheaton North made just 2 of 17 shots in the first half. WW South won the first-half rebounding battle 15-1 while committing just 4 turnovers.
The Tigers' second half was just a matter of avoiding a letdown while airing out the clock with some long possessions.
"We did not play well," said Eaton, whose team has to bounce back quickly with another tough DVC game Saturday at Lake Park. We did not execute well. We didn't help our cause. We had a real poor night offensively and defensively, and I thought their kids outworked us. They got every offensive rebound they wanted. They got every loose ball that was available. We got outworked."