A Little Extra: Great Atmospheres for Big Local Matchups at Warren, Prospect
Waukegan, Hersey Use Big Finishes for Big Conference Road Victories
There’s something special in high school sports about a great basketball crowd. One that’s so big and loud you can’t hear the incessant pleas of a few fans for 3-second calls and fouls.
And while basketball is great for setting up high-profile matchups in big one- and two-day events, there is nothing better than the intensity of a local rivalry with big student sections going back-and-forth in a fun way. It was great to see two games like this when Warren hosted Waukegan on Wednesday night and Prospect hosted Hersey on Friday night.
A Wild Ride in Gurnee
Some less-than-ideal winter weather and a mid-week game didn’t stop a huge contingent of fans to see Waukegan look to make a statement in the North Suburban Conference opener against one of the best teams and players in the state in Warren and sophomore guard Jaxson Davis.
It was quite a show that just kept getting better and better until Waukegan finally pulled away in the last two-plus minutes for a statement 72-62 victory. The additions of senior Xavi “X” Granville from Grayslake Central and 6-7 Jaali Love from Manley have meshed well early with junior guard Carter Newsome, 6-4 junior Simereon Carter and guard D.J. Cole.
“We have unbelievable early leadership with D.J. Cole,” said Waukegan coach Ron Ashlaw. “What we have are guys who are committed to each other and that’s not always the case with teams. It doesn’t matter to them who makes the block, who makes the steal or who gets the runouts. None of that matters.”
That also included some strong play off the bench from junior guard Adrian Serrano, who guarded Davis when Newsome was in foul trouble and scored 7 of his 9 points in the fourth quarter. Newsome and Serrano, along with some double-team hedging, limited the dangerous Davis to 14 points on 3-for-16 shooting.
“Our team is super-deep and if we get in foul trouble we trust the guys off the bench to come in and get the job done,” Granville said. “Everybody knows with Warren it’s Jaxson and we had to be aware of him. I felt we did a great job of stopping him.”
It’s always great to see a crowd like that elevate the level of play. Love (12 points, 12 rebounds) hit a tough baseline turnaround jumper over a defender. Newsome turned a block by Granville into a transition lob to Carter (20 points, 9 rebounds) for a dunk midway through the fourth quarter.
And it was fun to see how Granville has adjusted after watching him a handful of times last year at Grayslake Central. His 19 points and 8 rebounds included the 3-pointer that put the Bulldogs ahead to stay with 2:13 to play.
“We’re blessed that he’s here,” Ashlaw said.
Warren had plenty of high-level moments as well. Even though Davis had a tough shooting night his 6 assists included some eye-popping feeds and four came in a 15-2 tear late in the first half for a 31-22 lead. He had a bounce pass through traffic in the lane to Javerion Banks for a layup, grabbed an offensive rebound on the floor and from his back found Owen Squires for a 3, had a no-look backdoor feed to Jack Wolf for a 3-point play and then found Squires for another 3.
Banks also had a solid debut to the season with 16 points and 4 assists after missing the first four games with a hip injury. But a tough shooting night all around - 32.8 percent from the field (21-for-64), 15-for-24 on free throws and 5-for-20 on 3s - and getting outrebounded 19-13 in the second half was too much to overcome.
“They kind of outlasted us a little bit and it looked like we never got into a rhythm offensively,” said Warren coach Zack Ryan. “We had a couple of spurts and rebounding we struggled. But it’s early and it shows where we’re at and what we’ve got to work on.
“We know we’re going to get teams best shots and I don’t think anything surprised us. We just couldn’t get it going.”
It was the first of what figures to be a lot of intense matchups in the NSC this winter. And no doubt Tuesday, January 28 will be circled for the Warren-Waukegan rematch in the historic Dog Pound.
Hersey Finally Breaks Away at Prospect
Most suburban gyms have a cookie-cutter quality to them and that’s what makes Prospect’s Jean Walker Field House such a wonderful place for high school basketball. It’s almost like a trip back in time, especially when it’s a big matchup like Friday’s Mid-Suburban East opener with Hersey.
For around 29 minutes the game went according to form between two teams which had been separated by just 10 total points in their last four meetings. And Prospect was looking to follow up its sweep of last season in another tight matchup when it held a 3-point lead with a little more than five minutes to play.
Hersey’s 5 points to start the game was the biggest lead for either team until its stunning 18-point run to finish off a 51-36 victory that was the 400th of Bob Widlowski’s coaching career.
“I haven’t seen many of those,” Prospect coach Brad Rathe said with a rueful smile after Hersey’s 20-2 fourth quarter. “It’s one of those games where you’re at a little bit of a loss for words.”
Unbeaten Hersey trailed 19-18 at halftime and had a lead after the break for just eight seconds until the game’s final 4:21. But the way the Huskies stuck to their game plan and kept working defensively eventually led to the late breakaway.
“We executed much better in the second half than the first half,” Widlowski said.
“For us, especially in the first four games, we struggled in the first four minutes coming out of halftime,” said Hersey senior guard Brody Variano. “We’d come out flat the first three minutes and that sets the tone for the rest of the game. This gave us momentum for the rest of the game.”
Especially for junior Charlie Pomis, who was the MVP of Palatine’s Ed Molitor Thanksgiving Classic but was limited to 3 first-half points on 1-for-3 shooting by Prospect’s Colin Tucker. Pomis hit a 3 to start a personal 13-point second half where he made all 5 of his shots and Hersey shot a remarkable 13-for-14 from the field.
“I felt I had more confidence in the second half,” said Pomis, whose 3 with 4:21 left put Hersey ahead to stay at 38-36. “My teammates gave me the confidence to shoot the ball.”
Prospect shot just 1-for-8 from the field and committed 5 turnovers in the final eight minutes. Variano, Nick Irwin and Caden Shah had the challenging assignment of defending Prospect scoring leader Ben Schneider. The 16-point averager had a couple of impressive crossover moves for a 3 and a jumper and also hit a one-hand floater in the lane.
But Schneider couldn’t break free enough from the Huskies and had 11 points on 5-for-17 shooting.
“We really tried to make him work for his buckets because he’s a great player,” Variano said.
“Brody, Shah and Irwin did a nice job on Schneider,” Widlowski said. “He’s a tough player and he’s tough to guard.
“Brody’s an extremely dependable defender. He brings tremendous energy and executes the game plan very well.”
Rathe said his relatively inexperienced team has to work on better spacing and ball movement. That also includes getting used to playing with Schneider and not just watching and waiting for him to make things happen.
But he’s also seen a lot of encouraging signs that included most of Friday night’s game.
“We’re there, and that’s a weird feeling to have after a run like that, but we’re there,” Rathe said. “There are a lot of things we’re doing much better than we expected.
“Their potential to improve is significant. It’s a matter of putting it together but our ceiling is high.”
Success for Goodman Disciples Rey, Wolf
Legendary East Leyden and Leyden coach Norm Goodman would be proud to see the recent success of Will Rey and Gary Wolf.
Rey got his 400th victory in 21 years at Northridge Prep on Friday night. Wolf, who runs the defense at St. Viator, was lauded by head coach Mike O’Keeffe and senior Brandyn Michaels after a 50-36 win at Carmel on Thursday in Bill McLean’s entertaining story in the Daily Herald.
Seven years ago it was fun to catch up with Rey, who also had a five-year stint as the head coach at Loyola University, Wolf and longtime Chicago-area coach Bob Ward about Goodman’s influence on so many coaches. Goodman won 548 games from 1961-90 at East Leyden and Leyden.
“Norm was someone who really prompted me to coach and inspired me,” Rey said. “He did that for a lot of guys.”
Wolf was one of the legends of the West Suburban Conference’s 100th anniversary for his success running Leyden’s baseball program. And he continues to use what he learned from Goodman on the basketball court nearly 40 years ago.
“When I first met Norm, he asked me what I know about defense and I said, “I think I’m a pretty good defensive coach,” Wolf said in early 2018. “I showed him some drills I did and he broke them all down into 10 other drills. By the time we played a team I thought we knew their offense as well as they knew their offense.”
Illinois Legend Don Ohl Passes Away
Edwardsville’s Don Ohl, who was a five-time all-star during a 10-year NBA career, passed away Dec. 2 at 88. Ohl also helped prevent Barrington from winning a state trophy in 1954.
Ohl scored a game-high 21 points as Edwardsville beat Barrington, led by Roy DeWitz, 59-57 in overtime in the quarterfinals at Champaign’s Huff Gym. Ohl and Edwardsville teammates Mannie Jackson and Govoner Vaughn would go on to star at Huff in University of Illinois uniforms.
Ohl averaged 15.9 points a game in his NBA career with Detroit, the Baltimore Bullets and the St. Louis and Atlanta Hawks. Jackson and Vaughn played for the Harlem Globetrotters.
De La Salle Honors Tokars
Jerry Tokars was honored for his remarkable coaching career at De La Salle on Chicago’s South Side by having the basketball court named after him. Tokars was 425-157 from 1961-83 with a third-place Class AA finish in 1977 and trips to the Elite Eight in Champaign in 1979 and 1980.
The Meteors and “Massive” Mike Williams, who starred at Bradley with Hersey Hawkins and Jim Les for head coach Dick Versace and had a 21-game stint in the NBA, had to go through the MSL in the East Aurora supersectional for the last two trips to Champaign.
In 1979, they held on to beat Barrington with Ike Person and John Tomlinson 65-62 before losing to eventual state champion Maine South in the quarterfinals. A year later they beat Conant, with Ron Schimbke and Glenn Weeks, 58-36 to end the coaching career of Dick Redlinger. The Meteors lost in the quarterfinals to Effingham and future NBA big man Uwe Blab.
One-and-Done MSL Football Coaches
The end of ex-Bear Robbie Gould’s tenure at Rolling Meadows made him only the fifth MSL head football coach who lasted just one year. Gould went 5-5 with a playoff appearance.
The others were Hoffman Estates’ Eric Ilich (0-9 in 2012), Wheeling’s Norm Rathje (0-9 in 1978) and Conant’s Ron Smith (0-8 in 1965) and Ron Rio (1-7 in 1966). Smith and Rio were at Conant in the school’s first two seasons with a varsity program.
Congrats to Widlo on #400! Well earned by one of the legends of the MSL!