Wheaton Academy drops Kaneland
Kaneland coach Russell Zick came in 1-0 against Wheaton Academy. Tuesday the Warriors evened the score.
Wheaton Academy absorbed Kaneland's early energy and stormed back with good bench play by Max Scharnowski, Tobi Sonuga, Christian Pares and J.D. Rienow.
It evolved into a team effort that paced Wheaton Academy's 57-42 nonconference win in West Chicago.
"We knew they were going to come out and play well at the beginning," said Warriors coach Steve Thonn, "so we just had to kind of be ready for that and then just keep working at it the whole game."
Before Thonn was at the helm, in 2009 Zick coached Rochelle to a 61-57 win over the Warriors in the Class 3A Rochelle sectional semifinals.
Behind active Wyatt Peeler and Chase Carlson, on Tuesday it seemed Kaneland (1-9) might duplicate that feat.
The Knights led 7-1 and forced 5 turnovers in the first four minutes before Wheaton Academy (7-2) found its footing in the form of a timeout followed by a full-court press.
"We just felt like, hey, we're not playing real well so let's do it on the defensive side and try to pick up the pressure a little bit more," Thonn said.
Rienow and Sonuga, who hit two 3s, led a rally to within 11-10 after one quarter. Then Scharnowski, Pares and Marcus Bult led Wheaton Academy on a 12-2 run to end the first half up 26-21.
"We know where we are as a team, and we knew that we came out really flat," said Scharnowski, a 6-foot-4 junior forward who scored a game-high 18 points with 8 rebounds. "That's what we all were saying in the timeout. Bounce back, recover, next-play basketball. So we all just jumped in and went from there and built on top of that."
"Our kids didn't react very well to that (press), but it was a good move by Coach," Zick said. "It kind of took us out of our rhythm. We kind of had a good thing going up to that point, and that kind of shook our kids."
Scharnowski's play earned a third-quarter start. After a Carlson putback pushed Kaneland within 28-27 at 5:22 of the third quarter, Scharnowski hit a 3 and finished the quarter with a putback to build the Warriors' lead to 40-31 after three quarters.
His conventional three-point play and Jack Dykema's layup gave Wheaton Academy a 48-31 lead with 4:55 left to play. Kaneland came no closer than 14 points the rest of the way.
Sonuga scored 10 and Bult 9 for Wheaton Academy. Bryce Ebert led Kaneland with 12 points, Carlson adding 10 points and 9 rebounds.
"We just need to keep our foot on the gas," said Peeler, who scored 7 points. "They made some good adjustments that we couldn't really recover from. They threw on a pretty good press and they were running a pretty good flex offense we couldn't really get figured out."