Boys basketball: Davis scores 51, shatters records in leading Warren to Big Dipper title
Boundless excitement surrounded Warren as it returned to Rich Township's Richton Park campus for Tuesday's championship game of the 52nd Big Dipper Classic.
Warren had earned its ticket to the final having posted a dominant performance over one of the top Chicago Public School programs in Whitney Young in Monday's semi-final and now awaited a bout with another top-tier CPS unit in Kenwood.
"So far, so good," Warren coach Zack Ryan said prior to tip-off. "We're excited to be playing for the championship. We're ready to go."
His team proved him right as it would leave a positive impression on the standing-room only crowd in earning the title with an 88-54 win.
"Our goal was to come down here and win this tournament," Blue Devils junior guard Jaxon Davis said after his record-setting MVP 51-point, 7-rebound, 6-assist effort.
Davis' 51 points broke the previous single-game mark by Adam Miller of Morgan Park who scored 48 in a 2018 game.
"People down here (south suburbs) kind of doubted us from being up in the north (suburbs), but we're tough guys up here, too,“ Davis said. ”So coming out here and winning basketball games in one of the best tournaments around is a lot of fun."
Led by 10 by Davis, Warren (10-1) got off to a 26-11 lead after one as it used a 15-5 surge to end the quarter.
Kenwood (10-2) would pull within 34-30 thanks to a 10-2 run in the latter stages of the second before a trio of charity tosses including a pair from Davis kept Warren up 37-30 at the break.
Those free throws carried the momentum for the Blue Devils into the start of the third as part of a 10-3 surge that put them up 44-33 before a trio of 30-footers by Davis wowed the crowd. Another pair of triples by senior swingman Joel Paasch (17 points) left Warren comfortably ahead to stay 61-43 entering the fourth.
Senior forward Braylon, an all-Big Dipper honoree, added 13 points for the Blue Devils while junior guard Osiris Bell led the Broncos with 18 followed by his junior Damari Stephens with 12 points and senior center Prince McCord with 11.
Davis in doing his postgame interviews reiterated an even bigger goal for his team: a return to a facility further down Interstate 57 -- that being the State Farm Center on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus where the Blue Devils advanced to the Class 4A finals last winter.
"Our main goal is to win the state championship," Davis said.