Bibbs, West Chicago get hot, defeat Wheaton Academy
Playing its first game since Dec. 20, Wheaton Academy's boys basketball team faced one of DuPage County's hottest players.
It took a quarter but West Chicago's Tai Bibbs rolled for 36 points in the Wildcats' 63-46 friendly nonconference rivalry win Tuesday at Community High.
"We went back and forth a little bit in the first (quarter)," said Bibbs, who since Dec. 28 has put up four of his five top scoring games spanning three varsity seasons, including a personal-high 41 points.
"We like to play fast, we weren't hitting shots, though. I feel like we just got hot and that definitely helped," said the 6-foot-3 senior, who went 1 for 5 from the floor in the first eight minutes but 11 of 15 thereafter.
Wheaton Academy (4-7) sent Jack Dykema, Jameson Teuscher and 16-point scorer J.D. Gunn all into double figures, but the Warriors started out hitting 1 of 6 3-point attempts and finished 5 of 24.
"We tried our best but (Bibbs) shot really well and our shots didn't fall how we wanted them to," Gunn said. "But I think we left it all out there, and so there's a little something we could take away."
Besides one of Bibbs' tomahawk slams off a Luke Seeman alley-oop pass - "Luke knows where to put the ball," Bibbs said - early it was a flurry without much success. West Chicago (12-3) led 11-7 after one quarter.
"Once we started playing our game and not theirs is when we started settling in," said Wildcats forward Devonte Pascal, who joined Jason Gimre with 6 points apiece and led his team with 8 rebounds, 2 steals.
"They've been playing together long enough now where we're 15, 16 games into the season, they know when they're out of sync. We make sure that we let them know when they're out of sync," coach Bill Recchia said.
Part of that is shot selection, good enough for Bibbs to hit four 3s in the second quarter and Gimre and Jordan Wilkins to each make one for a 33-21 halftime lead. Bibbs' 13 third-quarter points keyed a 48-32 lead entering the fourth.
Wheaton Academy's Gunn, Dykema and Marcus Bult pared the lead to 50-40 with 5:12 left to play. West Chicago answered with a 9-2 run behind 3 Bibbs free throws and baskets from Pascal, Isaac Nelson and Seeman, who had 5 assists.
"I thought we got pretty good looks offensively," said Wheaton Academy coach David Osborn. "And yeah, when those don't fall you've got to get back and grind out a defensive possession. We did that early, the score stayed pretty low. Then they got hot and we just never did."