Willowbrook on the move
Troy Nelson is in his 16th year of coaching the Willowbrook girls basketball team, so the following assessment of senior guard Collette Williams carries some weight around Villa Park:
"In all the years I've coached, I've had very few kids that play as hard as she does," Nelson said. "She is what makes our team go."
Williams scored 16 points as one of three Warriors in double figures in Wednesday's 64-38 win over visiting Morton, in a West Suburban Gold opener.
But it was defense that Williams and her teammates used to slowly bury Morton. Willowbrook (4-2, 1-0) led by 6, 14 and 24 points, respectively, after each of the first three quarters and cruised to the win.
"At halftime the captains got everyone together and said, 'Come on, we're only up by 14 and we need to be up by more,' " said Warriors senior Ashley Kanelos, who led all scorers with 17 points.
"We needed to get up on (Morton) and keep them in front of us, so they didn't beat us off the dribble. We came out with energy, and that was our goal. It paid off."
Willowbrook broke to a 12-1 lead on good shooting from behind the arc against Morton's zone. Angela Domin and Taylor Nelson each hit 3-pointers, and Williams scored twice on breakaway layups off of steals.
Morton fought back with a pair of 3-pointers, and Willowbrook found itself in foul trouble early in the second quarter. The Warriors came out in a zone to start the third quarter and held the Mustangs to 9 points in the period.
"The first 30 minutes, I thought our defense was the difference," Nelson said. "But we had to go to a zone, or we wouldn't have had any kids left. There were so many fouls being called."
Treys from Taylor Nelson and Kanelos punctuated a 10-0 Warriors run that put them up by 20 points early in the third quarter, and they never looked back. Nelson finished with 13 points, Domin netted 7, and Katie Seccombe scored 6 on the night.
"All of our guards can hit 3s from the outside, so we're going to definitely try to use that," said Taylor Nelson, who also had 5 assists in finding teammates open on the perimeter all night.
"The kids moved the ball. That's what we worked on the last two games," Troy Nelson said. "We moved the ball tonight, spread them out, then we got in the gaps and got people more open shots."