Normal West earns big win by slowing one of Hononegah's smallest players
ROCKTON — Even with a pair of 6-foot-6 players out, Hononegah featured three regulars standing between 6-5 and 6-9 Saturday.
But Normal West quickly learned to key on stopping 5-9 senior Owen Hart.
“Their little guard, he is quite the player,” Normal West coach Eduard Hafermann said after a 65-55 victory in the first game of Hononegah’s annual MLK boys basketball tournament. “He can shoot in. In the second half, we made sure we stayed attached to him. If he sees the hoops and gets a shot off, he will knock it down.”
Hart hit two early 3s and scored eight of his team-high 18 points in the first quarter to shoot Hononegah to a 17-13 lead. But Hononegah made only 2 of 14 on 3-pointers in the last three quarters, while Normal West was 7-of-16 on 3s over the same time span.
“Owen has had a great year,” Hononegah coach Mike Miller said. “If he gets open, he’s got a chance to score a lot of points.”
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But he wasn’t open much in the last three quarters, shooting 3-for-11. And two of those baskets were fastbreak layups, not jumpers out of the half-court offense.
“They switched up their matchups and put a different guy on me,” Hart said, “someone a little quicker to slow me down.”
Braydon Savitski-Lynde, a 6-6 junior forward, did his part to slow down Normal West, blocking or altering eight or 10 shots.
“He is very athletic and he’s long too,” West’s Hafermann said. “That’s somebody who we were definitely keeping an eye on.”
“Braydon was phenomenal,” Hart said. “He stepped up big for us.”
Savitski-Lynde also scored 16 points and 6-9 center Dominic Commisso added eight for Hononegah (10-6). But after Commisso scored to cut Hono’s deficit to 57-53, Normal West (10-8) held the ball the final 3:30, not taking another shot. The Wildcats made 8 of 11 free throws and forced three Hononegah turnovers in that last 3:30 to put the game away.
“The shots just weren’t falling,” Hart said.
Max Ziebarth, a 6-5 senior who has committed to play tight end for Illinois State, was the only Normal West player in double figures with 22 points.
“He’s big and athletic,” Savitski-Lynde said. “It was a battle. But with our zone, I didn’t get to go up against him as much as I wanted.”
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Hononegah was scheduled to play Normal Community, ranked No. 6 in Class 4A, Saturday night in the tournament finale. One of the oldest MLK tournaments in the state was shortened to one day this year. Monday games will also probably be scrapped in the future, with Hononegah electing to schedule another nonconference game in exchange for giving up two tournament games, according to IHSA rules.
“Our tournament was probably the first one, so we were able to get some of the best teams in the state year-in and year-out,” Miller said of the field that this year was limited to longtime entrants Normal Community, Normal West and Naperville Neuqua Valley.
“It became the spot," Miller said. "As more and more tournaments popped up, it’s become harder to get teams. If you are an average team, you don’t want to come here and play the schools that we’re bringing in. And with teams coming in from a distance, it’s easier to pick up a nonconference game than doing the two-day thing.
“We will probably stay with the one-day tournament. The four teams we have here have been our flagship teams. All the coaches are good friends. It’s a good situation. If we could pick up four more teams, maybe we could do something different, but at least for the foreseeable future this is what we will do.”
Matt Trowbridge: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com; @matttrowbridge
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: High school basketball: Normal West beats Hononegah by slowing G Hart
