Stephani leads Wheeling to first win
Wheeling’s boys basketball season has been one to forget so far as it had lost all 16 of its games going into Saturday night against visiting Elk Grove.
However, sophomore Jeremy Stephani made it a night to remember as he scored a career-high 36 points and Wheeling ended a 19-game losing streak with a 74-65 Mid-Suburban East win over the Grenadiers.
“It feels good, we have been working hard to finally get a win,” said Stephani, who was 12-for-15 from the field and 5-for-7 on 3-pointers to surpass his previous best of 28 against Streamwood two weeks ago. “I felt good and my team was doing a good job of setting screens to get me open. We were running good plays.
“It feels good to score but it feels better to win.”
Which Wheeling (1-16, 1-4) did for the first time since Feb. 15 of last year when it beat Round Lake 70-36.
Wheeling fell behind early but kept in touch with Elk Grove (7-10, 2-3) thanks to Stephani, who scored 11 in the first half, including a shot to end the first half to pull Wheeling back within 32-30.
In the third quarter, Stephani was unstoppable with 21 of team’s 26 points in the quarter including his five 3s as Wheeling took the lead for good.
Brandon Yacu and Charlie Kirk each added 10 points as Wheeling coach John Clancy added the victory finally showed the quality of work his players have put on the court all season long.
“I’m extremely happy for our kids, we have great kids and high-character kids and it hasn’t shown up in the scorebook for us to this point,” Clancy said. “We had a great week of preparation and I think we really cleared the air on some things that were troubling us a little bit. Elk Grove is a good basketball team and I couldn’t be happier for the kids to experience the feeling of winning.”
Clancy continued by saying his team can build off this win.
“We’ve seen progress in our program and that their effort is paying off,” Clancy said. “There is evidence that they beat a good Elk Grove team and like I told them, we weren’t perfect (tonight). I’m not asking them to be perfect but when we play with exceptional energy, enthusiasm and effort for the game, good things are going to happen.”
Elk Grove was led by Austin Amann’s 23 points while Zachary Solorio added 19.