Hersey’s work leads to win over Wheeling

Relax, Hersey fans. Your boys basketball team is just fine.

Coming off a rough outing at their Thanksgiving tournament, you’d have thought the Huskies might be looking at a dry spell.

Friday night, instead, they met a Wheeling team still struggling to find itself and rolled away from the Wildcats’ gym with a 65-32 Mid-Suburban East-opening victory.

And they did it with defense.

Wheeling committed 19 turnovers and the ballhawking Huskies (2-3, 1-0) made them pay with transition layups. They also closed out on Wheeling’s strong point — its perimeter shooters, particularly Jeremy Stephani. He had one 3-pointer and finished with 9 points.

Hersey has Vuk Vukovic to thank for that. Vukovic, meanwhile, has his teammates to thank, as he did after the game.

“He’s a terrific shooter,” Vukovic said of Stephani.

But every pick Wheeling set for Stephani was greeted by a Huskie who jumped it in Vukovic’s support. And in the middle, 6-foot-5 sophomore Mike Fuerst anchored things when Wheeling had notions of going to the hoop, with help from Justin Jobski and Stefan Vucicevic. They had 23 points between them and helped Hersey to a 28-20 rebounding advantage.

Hersey seized control and never gave it back with an 18-point streak from the first quarter into the second. The spurt included Vukovic scoring inside, Kevin Kozil hitting 2 free throws, Jobski scoring on a fastbreak from Vukovic, Vukovic hitting the first of 4 consecutive 3-pointers he nailed and Sean Reszotko registering a steal and layin for a 22-5 lead.

Vukovic (14 points) opened the second half with 3 straight 3-pointers to negate any Wheeling (0-5, 0-1) comeback ideas.

It all left Hersey feeling a lot better about itself after the Thanksgiving rough ride.

“I thought that brought us together,” Vukovic said though. “We work hard. We just battle.”

“He played with a lot of energy,” Hersey coach Steve Messer said of Vukovic.

“I think we can be good,” said Messer, who pointed out that it really depends on, “How well we attack teams when we play five-on-five.”

For Wheeling, there were few bright spots after grabbing a 5-4 first-quarter lead on a slick Stephani pass to Chris Pierro.

“Right now, we’re not a very good offensive team,” said Wheeling coach John Clancy after his team shot 11-for-40 and 3-for-21 on 3-pointers, one of its strengths. “We thought we were going to give a better effort tonight.

“We’re learning how to compete. We’re learning how to win,” he said of the culture change he’s trying to instill.

He got some moments from Lamont McPherson around the basket and freshman Matthias Kim at point guard, both off the bench, but there’s just too big a hill to climb right now.

When will things get better?

“When we get that aggressive mindset,” Clancy said.

As Hersey suddenly is doing.

“The team’s pretty good,” said Vukovic. “We worked in practice and played hard. We play best as a team.”