Warren’s suffocating defense dominates McHenry
Warren set the tone right away against McHenry in Friday's sectional championship game at Rock Valley College.
The Blue Devils showed up playing rock-solid, man-to-man pressure defense and it took a toll from the jump ball. Warren started the game with 2 steals, a blocked shot, forced a traveling violation and pulled away early on the way to a 70-38 victory.
Warren (31-4) moves on to face Palatine in Tuesday's supersectional at NIU. The Blue Devils last trip to the supersectional was in 2012, when they lost to Rockford Auburn with current NBA guard Fred VanVleet. Warren was state runner-up in 2011 and 1999.
“We try to keep it simple, we play half-court man, try to get up and down fast and run motion,” Warren coach Zack Ryan said. “We're not doing anything fancy, but our guys buy into it and it's fun to watch.”
The pressure never let up. Even when the Warriors got decent looks, they seemed to rush too many of them. By halftime, Warren had forced 12 turnovers.
“I know McHenry, they haven't seen hard man-to-man in like three weeks,” Blue Devils senior Alex Daniels said. “They've only seen zones and I just don't think they were ready for our physicality and our pressure on the perimeter.”
Freshman Jaxson Davis led a balanced offense with an efficient 18 points, going 7-for-12 from the field. Daniels finished with 13 points and Jack Wolf added 12.
Daniels, one of two senior starters, believed this was possible even while the Blue Devils went through a drought of 12 years between regional titles.
“I remember actually freshman year, me and Jacquari (Nabb) were talking about it like, 'What if we go down to state? What if, what if?' And it's all happening,” he said. “All the hard work, the open gyms in the morning, the lifting, the summer work, it feels like it's all paying off. It's really rewarding.”
Wolf, who plays quarterback on the football team, has embraced his sixth man role. Just as he did in last week's regional final win over Waukegan, Wolf knocked down a pair of 3-pointers in the opening quarter. Warren led 23-7 after one and the game never got any closer.
“I've grown into the role and I've accepted it,” Wolf said. “I'm perfectly fine with the way I'm playing, the way coach plays it and if I'm knocking (3-pointers) down in practice, I can knock them down in a game. Why not?”
Junior Caleb Jett led the Warriors with 14 points, while senior Marko Visnjevac had a rough shooting night and scored 7.
“No. 1 (Visnjevac) had been really lighting it up the last few games, so we put our best defender Braylon (Walker) on him,” Ryan said. “He's been our best defender all year. Just making it hard for them. Not giving them clean looks, making sure we're active on the ball, and our guys did a great job with that.
“When we defend like that and move the ball, we're tough to beat. We've got a lot of unselfish guys who don't care who scores and when you have that, it makes it pretty fun to coach.”
McHenry last won a sectional title in 1976 and finishes the season with a 26-9 record.
“We got beat by a good team tonight,” McHenry coach Corky Card said. “They played well, they took it to us. We had, I thought, some times where we could have just slowed ourselves down a little bit, maybe got to the rim, had some more patience. But they sped us up and they played well, so good luck to them.”