Neuqua Valley earns last word
Neuqua Valley's Dwayne Evans said the trash talking with East Aurora started early Friday morning.
By 9:30 p.m. Neuqua's balanced squad had settled things on the court, winning the pivotal Upstate Eight Conference game 74-64 in south Naperville.
"We knew it was going to be a big game, they knew it too. It was a must-win for us as a team," said Evans, the St. Louis University-bound forward who scored 13 points with 17 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and a block. Center Kareem Amedu, headed to St. Michael's College, scored 22 points on 11-of-14 shooting.
All those numbers helped Neuqua Valley (22-1, 7-0) edge ahead of East Aurora (13-8, 6-1). Neuqua has three UEC games left in its attempt at the three-peat.
"We're happy with the win, but I know it doesn't really mean anything," Evans said. "It's just another stepping stone to a state run."
East Aurora has quality guards in Snoop Viser, Tramell Weathersby and particularly Ryan Boatright. They combined for all but 1 of the Tomcats' points with 22, 14 and 27 points, respectively.
What East Aurora lacks is an answer for the 6-foot-5 Evans and Amedu.
"It was pretty open all night for me," Amedu said. "I was trying to go to work, because we had a lot of turnovers (23) and some of our better players weren't scoring, so I tried to play as good as I could."
They weren't scoring a lot, but the points were nicely spread out as opposed to East Aurora's concentration. Neuqua wing Kyle Pembrook scored 14 points with two first-quarter 3s that steadied the Wildcats during the emotional start. Point guard Rahjan Muhammad had 13 with a pair of 3s that helped Neuqua expand a 36-32 first half lead to 57-44 after three quarters. Jim Stocki, who canned a pair of second-quarter 3s, scored 8.
East Aurora coach Wendell Jeffries noted the Wildcats' team play - Muhammad tallied 6 assists, inbounds specialist Tyler Sutton 4 - as well as Neuqua's 1-3-1 zone defense that limited the Tomcats to 13-of-38 second-half shooting. A zone is a sound strategy against the unguardable Boatright.
"A lot of our pressure is designed to come after a made basket, and we struggled against their zone and didn't score so we could get into our transition defense to get some easier buckets," Jeffries said.
The Tomcats were within 60-52 after a Weathersby putback with 5:50 to play. Evans and Amedu paced a 12-2 run to put it away with 1:35 left, taking the sting out of an uneven win.
"We let emotion take some shots for us and make some passes for us instead of really being calm," said Wildcats coach Todd Sutton. "A little shaky tonight. But the big guys, we were really good down low."