Boys Basketball: Minooka steamrolls Romeoville

Updated: January 27, 2012 11:36PM

One couldn’t have scripted a better ending for Minooka coach Scott Tanaka and his seven seniors on their special night Friday.

All seven seniors scored as the Indians powered past visiting Romeoville 65-35 in the Southwest Prairie Conference.

“We told our seniors that we need to get off to a good start and they did a fantastic job of doing that,” Tanaka said. “All of our seniors scored tonight, and that credit goes toward the kids as they are buying in to what we are preaching.”

Junior Jacob Hogen led the Indians (15-6, 6-1) with 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting, including 3-of-3 on three-pointers. The Indians also had significant contributions from seniors Adam Reynolds (10 points), Benjamin Heide (8) and Lavell Dean (8).

“We have very coachable kids here and it make our jobs as coaches pretty easy,” Tanaka said. “Our kids were patient against their zone tonight and aggressive defensively.”

Jaylen Nunn led Romeoville (6-14, 2-5) with 11 points.

Dean’s three-point play gave the Indians a 10-8 lead with 2:02 left in the first quarter. It was a lead Minooka would never relinquish.

Minooka led 16-8 after the first quarter and used its aggressive defense to spark their offense in the second quarter. A Heide three-pointer extended the Minooka lead to 20-10 with 6:12 left before halftime.

“It was a great atmosphere, we had a ton of support from our fans and I think we came out and performed well,” Heide said.

Minooka led 30-14 at halftime on 11-of-23 shooting from the field and had just four turnovers while forcing the Spartans into 11 turnovers. The Indians continued their hot shooting from the outside after the break connecting on 4-of-6 treys and led 48-26 after three.

“We just weren’t able to run our offense against their pressure defense. That is a credit to them,” Romeoville coach Jeff Bambule said.

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