Girls basketball: Waubonsie Valley keeps rolling, blows by Naperville North
As Thursday night’s DuPage Valley Conference battle between Naperville North and Waubonsie Valley got underway, North’s plan to stop Waubonsie’s Danyella Mporokoso became very evident.
At first, the strategy worked. The Huskies held Mporokoso, who averaged 27.5 points per game over a four-game stretch at the Bill Neibch Holiday Classic, to just 4 first-quarter points.
Unfortunately for North, the rest of the Warriors came to the court ready to fire.
Mporokoso found junior Maya Pereda for a pair of triples, and fellow senior Elli Morris for another. From there, the avalanche became far too much to handle for the Huskies (13-5, 1-3), as Waubonsie Valley (17-0, 4-0) opened up a lead it would not relinquish on the way to a 64-25 conference victory.
Immediately following a slow scoring quarter for Mporokoso, a 10-point individual scoring run stretched the Warriors lead to 22 just before the end of the first half.
The final bucket in a succession of swishes from Mporokoso, a three-pointer from the right wing, was one of 13 long shots drilled by the Warriors.
“It couldn’t have happened without (in the first quarter) all my teammates were working,” said Mporokoso, who finished with a game-high 27 points. “They were hitting their shots. They were getting baskets and that just allows me to be open.”
Junior shooting guard Ava Podkasik opened the scoring for North, aiding the Huskies in keeping the game tight early in the contest.
Podkasik led her team with 12 points, while sophomore Sydney Smith tallied 6.
Unfortunately for the visitors, as the shots began to fall for the Warriors, their defensive intensity never skipped a beat.
“I liked their aggressiveness,” said Warriors coach Brett Love. “We came out ready to play. I thought we were alert and aware.”
Early in the second half, a tidal wave of long-range makes for the Warriors continued. Back-to-back splashes from Morris highlighted five three-pointers in the third quarter for Waubonsie.
As an incredible start to the season continues for Waubonsie Valley, Love and his Warriors are focused on keeping the same intensity.
“We gotta do it in practice,” Love said. “We gotta be as intense in practice, if not more, and then bring that to the game. We got goals that we want to reach, and we keep that in mind.”