Falish fine from the field in Warren win
A middle infielder in baseball, Warren senior Jake Falish has surely made deeper throws.
Double-teamed and seemingly pinned by Lakes' bench in the closing seconds of the opening half Friday night, the 5-foot-10 guard heaved a shot from beyond the arc. It bounced high on the rim twice, before staying out of the basket as the buzzer sounded.
"The way I was shooting," Falish said, "I thought that was going to go in."
Most of everything Falish fired up found the bottom of the net. He scored 20 of his game-high 26 points in the first half, as Warren pulled away for a 54-37 win in fourth-round action of Mundelein's Thanksgiving tournament.
"He made shot after shot, and our kids executed really well," coach Ryan Webber said after his Blue Devils captured their first win of the season. "Our players did a great job of screening, cutting and ball movement. All those things went into Jake getting a hot hand, and he did a great job making shots for us."
Warren (1-3) missed Falish's shot-making last season, as he didn't go out for basketball. Instead, he focused on baseball because he plans to play that sport in college. He's narrowed his choices to Carthage College, Marian University and the College of St. Scholastica.
"I thought it would be better to take the winter off," Falish said. "I regretted it ever since, but it turned out to be the right decision in the end."
Falish had scored 24 points in Warren's first three games but was coming a 12-point effort that included four 3-pointers against Lake Forest Academy. Against Lakes (1-3), he shot 6 of 11 from 3-point range and 9 of 16 overall. Falish's two 3s and one by Chris Mathieu had Warren up 15-11 after one quarter. Falish made three more 3-pointers in the second quarter, as the Blue Devils outscored the Eagles 22-4 to take a 37-15 lead into halftime.
"My teammates did a great job of getting me open, and we had a lot of plays designed for me and our point guard, Jovan Jokic," Falish said. "We really executed those well with great screens."
Lakes received 10 points and 7 rebounds from Ethan Sage. Jake Balliu helped limit Falish to 6 points and just 4 shots (one 3-pointer) in the second half.
Jokic added 9 points for Warren, which after losing a game down the stretch to Barrington in its season opener, suffered defeats to Uplift and Lake Forest Academy. Those three teams were a combined 8-1 coming into Friday's action.
"I'm proud of our kids because I thought we played really hard," Webber said. "I thought we competed, and that's the thing we've been challenging them with. We played three good teams out of the gate."
Illinois football-commit Caleb Reams contributed 7 points and 5 steals for Warren, while Zach Schultz grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds and scored 4 points. The 6-foot-3 junior strained his Achilles late in the game, however.
"I thought our big guys at the back of our press really got active and assertive," Webber said. "They picked off a lot of balls or deflected a lot of passes, which got (Lakes') guards holding onto it and maybe not thinking that those deep plays down the sidelines or across the court were there."