Kits Hold On For Second Straight Victory

Even the elite high school basketball teams in Illinois don’t turn in consistent performances the first week of the season.

Evanston isn’t close to elite yet. But despite an uneven performance Wednesday at the Fenton Thanksgiving Tournament, the Wildkits held on for their second straight win, a 52-49 triumph over Wheaton Warrenville South.

After putting on a defensive clinic in the second quarter --- the Kits almost pitched a shutout --- the winners surrendered 22 points in the fourth quarter and needed 8-of-10 marksmanship at the free throw line to bring home the win.

Coach Mike Ellis’ squad will match up with another unbeaten, Rolling Meadows, in the final round of pool play on Friday at 5:30 p.m. Winner of that game will play for the tourney title on Saturday at 7 p.m.

Two free throws by junior Ian Peters with 8 seconds left on the clock came after a Wheaton South turnover with the losers only down by 3 points.

Brandon Watson was the guy who forced that turnover, hounding South’s Luca Carbonaro (game-high 26 points) into a traveling violation as the Tigers tried to set up their last shot. Carbonaro did score again on a rebound just before the final buzzer.

Carbonaro erupted for 12 points in the final period but couldn’t pull the losers any closer than 3 points. Evanston had enjoyed a 38-27 advantage at the start of the fourth quarter.

“We were up and down, up and down, and they had a kid get hot on us in the fourth quarter,” said Ellis. “Their best player got hot with the game on the line, and that will happen. But we gave up too many second chance points tonight. This is the kind of a game we can learn from.

“We had 13 assists and 15 turnovers tonight, and that shows that we didn’t value our possessions like we should. We can’t have that. We have to be a team that values the basketball. A lot of those turnovers were just carelessness. A lot of our players don’t have experience with a 10-point lead at the varsity level and we just have to do a better job for all 32 minutes.”

Theo Rocca’s 16 points and 12 from Watson accounted for the bulk of the ETHS scoring. Watson’s contributions on defense were just as valuable against Carbonaro, a 6-foot-2 junior who connected on 9 field goals --- several coming when someone other than Watson was assigned to guard him.

The 5-9 Watson credited his past experience guarding conference standouts like Glenbrook North’s Josh Fridman and New Trier’s Colby Smith as a key factor to containing Carbonaro on Wednesday night.

“I tried to pressure him coming up the court as much as I could so he couldn’t get easy shots,” said Watson, who started the opener Tuesday but came off the bench Wednesday. “I wanted to get on him before he got any space because he has a really quick shot like Fridman. I had to get up into him before he got ready to shoot it.

“After playing with and learning from the guys on our team last year, like Hunter Duncan and some of the others, I’ve gotten better about knowing what other guys’ go-to moves are and what to do against them.

“We did a pretty good job against their pressure (1-2-2 zone fullcourt) in the first half, but in the second half I thought we came out too stagnant on offense. Their press wasn’t really that good --- we just got stuck out there.”

“I really thought Brandon’s quickness was a factor (against Carbonaro). I don’t know how much quickness like that they see in their conference,” noted Ellis. “I thought Brandon’s on-the-ball intensity was a huge factor when we pushed our lead to 8-10 points in the second quarter.”

Carbonaro actually went scoreless in that period, and Wheaton-Warrenville’s only bucket was a layup by Brooks Becker with just 14 seconds left in the first half. Evanston erased a 13-9 deficit and outscored the losers 16-2 to take control.

That gritty man-to-man defense delivered just enough stops to lead to an eventual victory.

“To me it almost felt like watching our guys at practice,” added the ETHS coach, “when we play for consecutive stops (by the defense) and reward them for that against our offense. They really did a good job of buying into that and using the defense to get our offense going. We didn’t allow them to set up their pressure because we only had to take the ball out of bounds once (after an opponent’s score).”