Parkway South Opens Season With Resounding Win Over West

PARKWAY WEST HIGH SCHOOL — While game officials tried to figure out a scorebook issue that delayed the start of Monday’s boys basketball season opener between rivals and , the home fans decided to taunt South senior Mark Waller by calling him “Chubby”.

It didn’t seem to make much sense, because Waller is in no way heavy.

In fact, the 6’6" Parkway South High School power forward and Ballwin resident, looks to be in the best shape of his life.

“I didn’t even hear it,” Waller said. “I just try to tune everything out, and just play. I didn’t even notice.”

By the end of the night though, the only thing ‘chubby’ about Waller was his statline, which included a game-high 23 points and eight rebounds as he led the Patriots to a 55-38 win over the home Parkway West Longhorns.

“It’s great to get a win,” South High head coach Mitch Stevens said. “We were a little rusty in that first half. It was kind of tough, and you have to give Parkway West credit for that. But we made some adjustments at halftime, and were able to get ourselves a win.”

South led 25-23 at the half, and Waller led all scorers with 15 points in the first half. It was South’s defensive adjustments in the third quarter, however, that proved to be the difference in the game.

“We talked about a few things, and decided to be a little more conservative in the third quarter,” Stevens said. “We were able to get a couple of stops, and we got some rebounds, and some easy baskets, and that allowed us to take control.”

South senior Charlie Bakula had 16 points and fellow senior Sam Jaouni added 10 points, as the Patriots outscored West 16-4 in the third quarter.

“We were trying to slow them down a little bit,” West head coach John Wright said. “But we just kind of missed some assignments.”

Juniors Tyler Yess and Cash McCurdy led the Longhorns with 11 points apiece, in what was West’s first game of the season as well.

“We’re gonna have to find guys that can put the ball in the basket,” Wright said. “We don’t really have anybody that’s a proven 20-points-a-game scorer.

“I think we have some guys that are capable of that. But we don’t have anybody yet that’s proven they can. So we’ll just have to keep working at it until we find a little more consistency on the offensive end.”

Both clubs will be right back in action Wednesday night, when they’ll both face one of the other Parkway high schools.

West will be on the road Wednesday night, with a game against Parkway Central, while South will host its first home game of the year, against Parkway North.

“That’ll be an interesting matchup,” Stevens said. “North poses some different problems than West does for us. They’ve got some quickness and they’ve got the big boy (6’8 Darrell Johnson) in the middle. It should be fun.” 

Tip-off for both of those games is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday.