Ice Cold Kits Suffer First Cage Loss

The cold front that hit the Chicago area Thursday settled in over Evanston’s basketball team on the road at Deerfield --- and stayed there.

And that’s when the Wildkits gave new meaning to the term “frigid”.

Evanston missed 18 field goal attempts in a row in the second half and dropped a 46-40 decision to a mediocre Deerfield squad in Central Suburban League South division play, ending a 7-game win streak to start the 2024-25 season.

ETHS head coach Mike Ellis didn’t just point to all of those misses as the reason for his team’s first defeat. It was his squad’s approach after a series of blowout victories to open the season that concerned the veteran coach more than anything.

To say that the Kits flunked their first conference road test would be an understatement. They were ice cold from the field, sinking just 4-of-30 shots in the second half. Their overall shooting percentage of 28 percent included a dismal 8-of-33 effort from beyond the 3-point stripe.

“We didn’t come to play tonight. Now that’s two conference games where we’ve done nothing,” said Ellis after the loss evened Evanston’s league mark at 1-1. “We wanted to play, and they wanted to win. That was the difference tonight.

“Deerfield took it to us. We allowed them to be the aggressor and we were the casual bystanders out there. We missed so many opportunities to attack the guts of their matchup (1-3-1) zone. We were easy to guard, because we were out there hunting shots from 20 feet, not from 2 feet.”

Deerfield, now 5-3 overall, scored its first conference win behind 6-foot-8 Jake Pollack’s 20 points. He cashed in on 8-of-9 free throw opportunities as the Warriors outscored Evanston 18-4 at the charity stripe.

The hosts staggered to the finish after turning the ball over seven times in the fourth quarter, Down by nine at halftime, Deerfield held the visitors to an 0-for-11 shooting performance and Evanston’s only point of the third stanza came on a Vito Rocca free throw with 4 minutes, 28 seconds left on the clock.

Things didn’t get much better in the final period. Deerfield only had a two-point advantage, but a corner 3 from Tony Donahue, a pair of free throws and then back-to-back buckets by Pollack stretched the lead (at 39-28) too far for ETHS midway through the quarter.

Evanston’s last gasp came when Theo Rocca’s 3-point shot narrowed the deficit to 41-35 with 1:47 left in regulation. Then Kaiden Chatham missed a contested layup after a Deerfield turnover and the Warriors sewed up the win at the free throw line.

Theo Rocca paced ETHS with 14 points and George Richardson added 8 points and 7 rebounds.

The Wildkits will play Riverside-Brookfield on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Team Rose Shootout held at Mount Carmel.