Blackhawks win tuneup for Tomcats

Updated: March 23, 2011 9:26AM

Coach Gordie Kerkman was worried Friday night that his West Aurora boys basketball team would naturally look ahead to its biggest game of the year Saturday night at East Aurora.

All those misgivings went out of the gym by the end of the first quarter against visiting West Chicago when the Blackhawks shot the cover off the ball to rout the Wildcats 66-34.

"I was concerned," Kerkman said. "I wouldn't say I lost sleep over it, but anytime you have a big game coming up the next night, regardless of who you're playing, you're concerned they'll look ahead."

The Blackhawks (13-8, 8-3 in the DuPage Valley Conference) put their coach at ease by making their first five shots to open up an 11-0 lead, before finishing the quarter 9 of 11 from the field to hold a 21-6 lead.

"We have to play better defense," Wildcats coach Kevin Baldus said. "If we contest shots, they'll miss more shots. If we don't contest shots, they make more shots."

Simple concept, bad execution for West Chicago (4-18, 0-11), which picked up 12 points from Justin Mundt and nine from Dylan Hedmark.

But the Wildcats shot just 28 percent in the first half, while the Blackhawks shot 58 percent, scored 39 first-half points and kept their opponent from getting a defensive rebound in the first quarter.

"We only had one other game this year where we scored 39 in the first half," Kerkman said. "But we were patient, we didn't turn the ball over."

West Aurora guard Brandon Hayes shined on his senior night, setting a new career high in rebounds with 12, while scoring 13 points.

"No, no, no, no. No bad senior nights," Hayes said afterwards. "I wanted to go out and hustle, but I didn't want to use up too much energy because we have a big game tomorrow. I still wanted to hustle and help set the tone."

Blackhawks junior forward Juwan Starks scored 10 points and senior Jonathan Dennison added nine, but it was freshman point guard Jontrel Walker that nearly showed up the upperclassmen with 12 points, all in the first half.

"He was hot," Hayes said. "He's been off a couple games, but he found his shot. We were shooting around earlier and he was shooting pretty good so I told him to just get in the game and shoot it."

West has four games left including the Tomcats tonight, but with Glenbard East about to wrap up first place again, East is the remaining highlight on the regular-season schedule.

"It's gonna be a crazy atmosphere, a crazy game," Hayes said. "It's gonna be fast-paced, but we've proven we can play and we feel we can beat East. We're looking forward to it. We've been waiting for this since the summer."

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