WW South gets the pace it likes
Waubonsie Valley forward JaQuan Bowman may have coaching in his future. He knew exactly what Wheaton Warrenville South's boys basketball team was trying to do and what the Warriors should have done about it.
"Their press got into us," said the 6-foot-4 senior. "We've got to slow things down. We've got a lot of young players, just moving too fast."
Battling foul trouble, Bowman scored a team-high 15 points, no match Saturday for a Tigers team whose defense and ball movement created its third highest output of the season, a 71-44 DuPage Valley Conference win in Wheaton.
"We kind of want to speed them up a little bit, and we did," said WW South coach Mike Healy, whose squad won its 10th game more than a month earlier than last season.
"Sometimes when we get things going defensively, our offense kind of feeds off that, so we seem a little more relaxed when we're shooting it," Healy said.
WW South (10-4, 4-2) set the tone 20 seconds in when Matt Waldron took an offensive charge protecting the lane. That preceded a torrent of 3s by Jeran Simpson and Matt Dacy-Seijo, inside buckets by Eric Rasch and general mayhem inflicted by a defense that extended full court then drew into a 1-2-2 zone.
"We've played together for forever, so we try to work it around, and we share the ball very well, the extra passes to get the open shots," said senior guard Ryan Scudder, who grabbed 10 rebounds on his 18th birthday.
Waubonsie (4-12, 0-6) held within 11-10 on a Brian Phillips 3 but closed the quarter with 4 turnovers, a miss, and on the wrong end of a 24-10 score. WW South made 10 of 14 shots.
"We have to do a better job of taking care of the basketball. Faking a pass to make a pass, not jumping in the air to make a pass and coming down," said Warriors coach Chaz Taft, who got later production by Jonathan Cruz and Justin Mullinax.
In the second quarter WW South didn't approach its early shooting clip but didn't need to. It forced 9 turnovers to lead 39-20 at halftime.
Forcing 20 turnovers for the game, the Tigers worked the ball to Dacy-Seijo for three more 3s as the senior guard hit 6 overall and scored a game-high 24 points. A 23-point third quarter gave WW South a 62-37 lead entering the fourth.
Simpson scored 12, Rasch 10, and starting with 6:16 left to play Healy made sure all 18 Tigers got minutes.
"Today I think our defense turned into a lot of our offense. We made extra passes," Dacy-Seijo said.
"Our chemistry on our team is unbelievable," he said. "I've never played with anybody like this. I mean, we're all friends, we all go hang out after the games, so that helps with the culture and everything."