With leading scorer Christopher Kirkpatrick sidelined by an ankle injury, New Trier’s only hope to knock off Evanston’s basketball team Tuesday night was to try to keep the score in the 40s.
The Wildkits co-operated in the first half. But there was no denying the hosts in the second half when their shots finally began to fall.
Evanston used a 10-0 run in the third quarter to provide enough offense to go with a relentless defense. In front of a capacity crowd that showed up at Beardsley Gymnasium for the 13th annual Bost Family Classic, the Wildkits pulled away from the Trevians for a 54-35 victory and clinched the Central Suburban League South division championship.
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Evanston, now 24-4 on the season, captured its first conference crown since 2021 by limiting the visitors to just four field goals in the entire second half. The Kits completed a regular season sweep of their rivals to the north behind 15 points from Theo Rocca and 11 apiece from Kaidan Chatham and George Richardson.
Tied at 20-all at the halftime intermission, no one could find a panic button in the ETHS locker room.
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Even head coach Mike Ellis wasn’t as concerned as he might have been.
“I could sense that the guys weren’t happy with the way they were playing. They knew they needed to play better, and they knew they could play a lot better, so I wasn’t as worried as I might usually be,” Ellis said.
“I just felt it was a matter of time before our shots would begin to fall. And we didn’t panic. We did a better job of playing inside-outside (on offense). We had a lot more uncontested shots because we played smarter in the second half.”
Evanston’s last CSL title came in 2021 at the end of a dominant stretch in which the program either won or shared the crown for seven years in a row, a record for ETHS. But the last two titles --- in 2021 and 2020 --- the Kits were forced to share.
This one’s all theirs.
“We didn’t want to share it,” Ellis grinned. “There are not many times in life where it’s good to be selfish, but this is one of them. This is just one chapter of our story. We’ve got more chapters to author.”
“It feels great to be a conference champion,” added Chatham, the senior guard who transferred in from Niles North this past summer. “I did win one on the other side (North division), but it was harder on this side. The competition is a lot more intense (in the CSL South).
“The coaches can show us what we should do, but the energy and effort, that’s on us. We knew we had to pick up the pace and the intensity in the second half. We had to come out in the second half and smack them in the mouth --- and that’s what we did.
“When I came here everyone said defense wins championships and our energy always comes from the defensive side. I can use my all of my tools (6-foot-2 height with long arms) more, and they really got me to like playing defense here.”
There’s nothing to like about facing that ETHS defense, however. New Trier was held to a season-low point total --- the Wildkits have done that to several teams so far this season --- and shot just 32 percent (12-of-37) from the field, including a woeful 4-for-18 in the second half.
Guard Colby Smith was the only New Trier player to reach double figures, totaling 11 points on 4-of-10 shooting. The Trevians fell to 19-10 on the season and now trail the all-time series between the two rivals by a margin of 125-100.
Evanston couldn’t find the range from beyond the 3-point stripe in the first half, missing all nine attempts and denying the home crowd a chance to get excited about closing in on a championship. New Trier never led in the half, but Elton Jaegerskog’s basket in the lane with 46 seconds left in the half knotted the score at 20-20 and left the visitors with some hope.
But that shooting drought didn’t last long. After a pair of free throws by Vito Rocca, and a rebound basket from Richardson, Theo Rocca delivered his patented step-back 20-footer --- faking a Trevian defender almost into the ETHS bench in the process --- and the next time down the floor, Richardson fired in a 3-pointer of his own to extend the Evanston lead to 32-22 with 3:15 left on the third period clock.
Freshman Ben Ojala added a 3-pointer in the final minute of the period as the Wildkits led 37-29 and never looked back after that.
“New Trier’s not the same team as the last time we played them, missing their best player like that,” Ellis said. “But tonight we focused on being better than WE were in our last game, not on being better than the last time we played New Trier.
“Our defense was solid when the offense wasn’t clicking, and we made some plays and played a little smarter in the second half. We also picked up the pressure on them a little bit. That 10-0 run was a result of changing some of our coverages and forcing them to speed up. We played smart, we played hard and we played together.”
Evanston and New Trier will likely earn top four sectional seeds when the results of the voting for the Class 4A New Trier Sectional complex are announced later this week.
“Being in the top four is all I care about,” said Ellis, the only coach ever to lead the Wildkits to back to back Final Four state tournament appearances. “No matter where you’re seeded, you still have to win two games in the regional, and two games in the sectional. Otherwise, unless they start awarding byes some day --- I’ll take a free win --- it really doesn’t matter where we’re seeded.”
Evanston will close out the conference season on Friday at Maine South. Next Wednesday, the Kits will host CSL North champion Niles North in the CSL Showcase crossover game.
