Trevs Impose Their Will In Second Half Of Rivalry Win

Long-time watchers of the Evanston-New Trier basketball rivalry didn’t take long to realize they hadn’t seen something like this in awhile.

Rarely have the Trevians been able to impose their will on Evanston as a team in the history of the head-to-head matchups between the two programs like they did Thursday night at Beardsley Gymnasium.

In front of a sellout crowd for the 12th annual Bost Classic girls-boys doubleheader event, New Trier dominated the second half and eased to a 50-37 Central Suburban League South division victory. It marked the 100th win for the Trevians compared to 122 for Evanston all-time in the series.

New Trier was unstoppable in the second half after leading just 18-14 at the intermission. Led by sophomore guard Christopher Kirkpatrick, who abused the smaller ETHS defenders with 11 points in the third period, the visitors converted 12-of-19 field goal attempts, mostly by bullying their way to the hoop for layup after layup.

The Trevians (10-1) shot 47 percent overall (15-of-42) compared to Evanston’s 38 percent (15-of-42). Senior Morgan Brown led ETHS with 12 points and 7 rebounds and Ian Peters added 8 points off the bench.

Evanston, now 9-4 overall and 2-2 in league play, trailed only 18-14 at halftime following a first half that featured mostly missed shots by both sides. Things never got any better for the hosts after that.

The second half certainly felt like a lump of coal being stuck in his Christmas stocking for Evanston head coach Mike Ellis, who isn’t used to seeing his teams dominated by New Trier.

“They did impose their will,” Ellis agreed. “We had guys who took too many plays off tonight, on both ends of the floor, and New Trier didn’t take a single play off.

“I really wasn’t discouraged by our defense because they’re going to score 50 points, one way or another. That’s a team that thrives on 3-point shooting, and we took that away from them (only 3-of-12) tonight. You can’t take away everything. If you told me before the game that they’d only have three 3s, I’d have taken that.

“But this was a rerun of our GBN (Glenbrook North) game. We were down four at halftime after playing badly in that one and we learned absolutely nothing from that. We just repeated that performance in the second half.”

Kirkpatrick’s scoring outburst in the third quarter (he finished with a game-high 15 points) helped the Trevians push the lead to 38-25 by the end of the period. Logan Feller (13 points) and William LeeMaster (10) also reached double figures for the winners.

Evanston didn’t score at all in the fourth quarter until there was 5 minutes, 10 seconds left on the game clock and Brown tallied on a putback. All that score did was cut the New Trier lead to 20 points.

“I’m disappointed that we didn’t play smart enough or hard enough off the basketball tonight,” said Ellis. “New Trier was the aggressor all night and we weren’t focused enough. We did get the ball into the paint, but we missed seven layups in the first half. When you miss like that in the paint, that’s the kind of thing that rejuvenates your opponent.”

The Bost Classic is an annual event to honor the late Bob Bost, a long-time coach in the program, and his grandson Ryan, a former ETHS player who was murdered in 2020. Members of the Bost family were recognized in between the girls and boys varsity games Thursday.

The Wildkits are back in action next week at the 80th annual Centralia Holiday Tournament, after finishing as runners-up in both 2022 and 2021 there. They open tourney play next Thursday at 3:45 p.m. against Miami (Fla.) Ferguson.