Wheaton Academy stops Neuqua Valley

Well executed and taken with confidence, the 3-point shot can solve a lot of problems in high school basketball.

Well, that and solid defense.

Wheaton Academy had a 6-point halftime deficit against Neuqua Valley on Wednesday in the opening round of the 53rd annual East Aurora Holiday Tournament. Coach Steve Thonn preferred to focus on defense in his halftime discussion, figuring the shooting would come.

It did. The Warriors put together an 11-0 run to start the third quarter and a 9-0 spurt to start the fourth, punctuated by key 3-pointers, en route to a 72-56 victory to improve to 8-3.

"We talked at halftime about just playing better defense coming out in the second half," Thonn said. "We thought we gave up a few too many easy shots for them, so we tried to tighten up our man defense and I thought we did a great job."

But coach - your team knocked down six 3-pointers in the second half, 5 in the third quarter alone. That's got to count for something, right?

"We did get hot there in the second half," he said. "We do like shooting the 3. Timing sometimes, it might not have been a good time, but if we're open, we want to shoot the 3. We have some good shooters and they got some really good looks in the second half."

Neuqua Valley had a pair of 9-2 first-half runs to jump out to a 33-27 halftime advantage. But coming out of the break, things took a different turn for the Wildcats (4-7).

Junior guard Marcus Bult fashioned an 8-0 run of his own to start the third quarter, including a three-point play, immediately followed by a 3-pointer from the right arc at 4:35. About a minute later senior guard Jack Dykema hit one of his own, from the right corner, which gave the Warriors a 38-33 lead.

They never trailed again.

"Shooters shoot," said Bult, who led the Warriors with 22 points and made a pair of 3s. "It really helps to make shots. We work so hard on the offense to get guys open so it's nice to knock them down."

"We work on that all the time, just shooting the 3 with each other," said Dykema, who made all 5 of his 3-point attempts and finished with 15 points. "Today we both got hot in the second half and just put it to work every time down."

Neuqua Valley did make it interesting in the fourth quarter, however. After Wheaton Academy's 9-0 run to start the period have the Warriors a 59-40 lead, the Wildcats struck back with a 14-3 run of their own to cut the deficit to 62-56.

Half of Neuqua Valley's points in that stretch were scored by sophomore John Poulakidas, who led all scorers with 23 points and his own team with 5 rebounds. He had a steal and a layup at 5:25, and then a jumper in the lane at 2:24 that cut the deficit to 62-56.

But it wasn't quite enough.

"I think even though it was late in the game, we finally came together as a group," Poulakidas said of that big run. "We just told each other, if we want to win this game, we have to dig deep, and we did that late in the fourth quarter."

Despite the loss Neuqua Valley coach Todd Sutton said the East Aurora tournament is a sort of final exam heading into conference play post-holidays.

"It's not one game you're preparing for man to man, it's four games you're preparing for, basically every defense we're going to see," Sutton said. "We're going to see some zone, some press, some man to man, a lot of things."

Neuqua Valley shot 50 percent from the field but got outrebounded by Wheaton Academy 30-23.