All’s well that ends Wells for Grant

The public address announcer at Johnsburg earned a gold star on Friday night.

He got correct what many of his colleagues get wrong.

“Announcers are always saying my name wrong,” laughed senior guard Sean Wells, Grant’s speedy dribbler and slasher extraordinaire.

Many people typically pronounce Wells’ first name just as they would pronounce the name Shawn.

But just like his dad, Wells pronounces his first name Seen, as in “Have you seen how quickly Wells can get to the basket?”

It’s a good thing the Johnsburg announcer was on the ball with his pronunciations. He had to announce Wells’ name again and again.

Wells led four players in double-figures as Grant steamrolled host Johnsburg 78-54 in the Richmond-Burton/Johnsburg Thanksgiving tournament.

With a game-high 20 points, Wells epitomized what worked for Grant all night long. He turned turnovers into scores, and he did the same with missed shots.

Grant’s pressure defense, spearheaded from the point by Wells, forced 24 Johnsburg turnovers and generated some easy layups and dunks in return. Plus, the Bulldogs (1-2) rolled up a whopping 18 offensive rebounds, and turned 11 of them into putbacks.

Wells had 3 putbacks himself.

“Those were the keys to the game today,” Well said of the defense and rebounding. “We were running up and down the floor, getting steals, forcing turnovers. It was an important part of the game.

“We’re such a balanced team, too. Everyone was scoring off of it.”

A total of nine players scored for Grant, which also got double-figures out of Allen Lewis (16 points), Ilya Kadushin (12 points) and Jared Helmich (11 points).

“We tried to get the tempo a little more up and down,” Grant coach Wayne Bosworth said. “That’s the style we want to play and our guys are doing a great job with that right now.

“Rebounding was also really good. We’ve got a lot of big, strong kids who can jump out of the gym. We still have to make sure that we’re putting a body on someone every time (a shot goes up), but we’re working on that.”

Grant took a comfortable 36-22 lead into the locker room at halftime and then extended that to as many as 22 points in the third quarter. With just a few minutes gone in the fourth quarter, the lead had mushroomed to as many as 24 points.

“We just need to work more as a team,” said Johnsburg guard Kevin Dombrowski, who finished with a team-high 16 points. “We get frustrated on each other a lot. We’ve just got to stay positive, and work out the kinks.

“We need to work on everyone being confident when they get the ball.”

The Bulldogs are feeling more confident after being shaken just a few days ago. They opened the season on Tuesday with a loss to Rockford Harlem in which they blew a 10-point second-half lead.

But now, Grant has won two straight. On Wednesday, the Bulldogs defeated Marengo.

“The first game was a huge punch in the gut to everyone. The guys were super ticked off about it,” Bosworth said. “They (Harlem) got a decent lead in the first half. We came back and got our lead, but in the fourth quarter, we got real tentative. We didn’t attack and they clawed back in it and took a 2-point lead with about a minute to go.

“It was a wake-up call to all of us and we’re hoping that in the long run it will be the best thing that could have happened to us. We’ll learn from it.”