Watseka moves onto regional quarters with win over Iroquois West

WATSEKA – When the Watseka boys basketball team met Vermilion Valley Conference rival Iroquois West way back on Dec. 20, a game the Raiders won in runaway 51-35 fashion, Warriors head coach Chad Cluver said the game became a gut check for the team after they fell to 2-10 on the year.

“It kind of set us up for what the rest of the year was gonna be,” Cluver said. “When we came back from Christmas for practice, it was, ‘It’s a job interview, boys. Who wants to play and who doesn’t?’”

Comparing that matchup to the teams' second meeting of the season at the IHSA Class 2A Hoopeston Regional quarterfinals in Watseka Monday night, it seems that the Warriors wanted it. Watseka (12-18) didn’t trail over the final three quarters, defeating Iroquois West (13-18) 43-30 to advance to Wednesday’s regional quarterfinal against Bismarck-Henning at 6 p.m. in Hoopeston.

“It was either you’re gonna want to join us, be together all the time, play defense and do the little things to win, or if not, we’re gonna find other guys that will,” Cluver said of the early-season dose of reality. “We had a lot of guys step up to it. It was still a process, a lot of ups and downs on the season, let alone in a game.

“We’re getting more mentally tough and that showed tonight. I was pretty proud of how the boys executed.”

The Warriors caught fire near the end of the first, going on a 6-0 run in the final minute to take a 12-8 lead into the second. They opened the second quarter up with a pair of second-chance buckets, a Payton Schaumburg 3-pointer and Andrew Shoemaker layup, to go ahead 17-8, and eventually built a 26-14 halftime lead that never got closer than eight points the rest of the way.

Watseka senior Quinn Starkey, who had a game-high 15 points, said that the team not only executed Cluver’s gameplan the way he wanted them to, but they also showed their chemistry on the court with the way they patiently found the open teammate.

“We run X’s and O’s really well and practice it,” Starkey said. “Also, one thing we work on is the flow of the offense. We have a lot of stuff that we can do, so just not forcing stuff either, and if a guy inside is having a hot night, we know to get it to him.”

Shoemaker was often the recipient inside, finishing with a dozen points. Schaumburg and James Newell had six points apiece.

The Raiders got 10 points apiece from the frontcourt tandem of Beau Howe and Kobie Hendershot and four more first-quarter points from the third senior big man in their rotation, Cort Leonard. But those were the only three IW players to score until the fourth quarter against a Watseka defense that suffocated the Raiders on the perimeter for most of the night.

“We’ve improved so much on both ends, but especially on the defensive end, from if you were to have seen us at the beginning of the year until now,” Cluver said. “The guys executed the defensive gameplan tonight and it showed.”

The Warriors, who have now won four of their last five games in addition to a five-game winning streak last month, weren’t the only team that entered Monday’s tilt confident in their play of late.

After a 2-8 start to the season, the earlier matchup with the Warriors was also part of a spark for the Raiders, who hadn’t quite seen the results in the win column, but in the eyes of head coach Zach Monk, made great strides as the year went on.

“It was a lot of development from the seniors, just maturing throughout the year,” Monk said. “Not a lot of them got a lot of time last year, but we were playing a lot better basketball the last month and a half, even if our record didn’t reflect it.”