A solid three quarters powered Evanston’s basketball team past host DePaul Prep by a 55-32 margin Wednesday at the Battle of the Bridge Thanksgiving Tournament. But the Wildkits will need more than that on Friday.
Evanston’s third straight pool play win assured the Kits of a matchup for the second year in a row with highly-regarded Notre Dame in the tournament championship game set for Friday at 8 p.m. It was another balanced effort on offense for ETHS, which was paced by Jerome Bynum’s 11 points and Dylan Mulvihill’s 10 points and 8 rebounds.
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The defense? DePaul didn’t score a basket on its home court for the entire first quarter and finished with just 30 percent shooting (11-of-36) overall.
“I thought we were pretty solid for three quarters of the game,” said Evanston coach Mike Ellis. “In the second quarter we got out of character a little bit as a team. We need to play consistently, one possession at a time, but we were thinking about the next offensive possession already when we were on defense, and I thought as a result we got sped up a little too much on offense. That’s what led to some breakdowns.
“We’ll have another tough game coming up on Friday. Each game we play, we have to be better, and we know we’ll have to be better Friday than we were today.”
Evanston left no doubt to the outcome Wednesday by breaking out to a 17-1 lead over the Rams in the first quarter. Highlight of the period was Nojel Eastern’s halfcourt buzzer beater, one of just two baskets scored by the junior standout with members of the Northwestern University coaching staff in attendance, including head coach Chris Collins.
Evanston got possession after a turnover with a half second remaining and inbounded the ball from near mid-court. Somehow Eastern received the pass, dribbled once and let it fly in that scant time period, and banked the ball through.
Eastern did finish with 9 points, 7 rebounds and 2 blocked shots for the winners. He only attempted 7 field goals for the game. Also turning in a noteworthy performance was Elyjah Williams, with 6 points and a game-high 10 rebounds.
Evanston cashed in on 8-of-21 3-point field goal tries, led by Bynum’s 3-of-6 performance. He tossed in a triple after the Rams had cut their deficit to 36-25 early in the fourth quarter, and the rout was on as the visitors outscored the Rams 19-9 in the final period.
“We did a good job of finding Jerome when he was hot,” Ellis added. “I thought we had good balance inside and outside today when it came to our overall team productivity.”
Source: ETHS Sports Information