Wheaton Academy wins big vs. West Chicago
It wasn't West Chicago's fault, nonetheless Wheaton Academy made the Wildcats pay.
Coming off a flat loss last week at Riverside-Brookfield, the Warriors boys basketball team sought to maximize their effort Tuesday. After a close first half everything worked in an 80-49 nonconference home win in West Chicago.
"We wanted to come back and respond. I think the guys did a great job of coming back. We played a lot harder, I think we played a lot smarter," said Wheaton Academy coach Steve Thonn, whose squad already has three more wins than last season after scoring its season high.
Wheaton Academy (9-4) needed Jayston Williams' 30-foot 3-pointer at the first quarter buzzer to take a 17-16 lead, and led just 34-27 at halftime. West Chicago (6-8) hung in by getting into the bonus in the first quarter and making 13 of 15 first-half free throws.
Wheaton Academy wasn't as foul-prone thereafter. Between overall numbers like West Chicago's 13-of-41 field-goal shooting and taller Wheaton Academy's 34-16 rebounding edge the Warriors exploded for a 27-point third quarter and 46-point half.
"We're outsized most of the time, we have a really small team," said Wildcats guard Jordan Wilkins, who joined Jason Gimre with 10 points, each behind team leader Sam Ricci's 14. "So we've really got to just box out and play more physical than the other team, but tonight that didn't happen."
What did happen was Wheaton Academy successfully worked the high-low game, it cleared the boards, pushed the pace and, inevitably, made 31 of 50 field-goal tries.
"We're just really trying to work the ball inside, play an inside-out game," said Williams, who scored 23 points to Marcus Bult's 19 and J.D. Gunn's 10. "So that caused them to collapse and we know we have great shooters on the outside. That just opens up the floodgates."
Once open Thonn gave supporting players such as Justin Hocker, Elijah Wendel and Steven Ryan decent fourth-quarter minutes.
West Chicago coach Bill Recchia rattled off several areas of improvement - boxing out, help-side defense, getting back down the court defensively.
"The good thing about what happened tonight," he said, "is all the areas that we lacked in are correctable."