Brookfield East enjoying breakout basketball season

This was going to happen eventually. Brookfield East’s football team won a state title in 2016. Its track and field program, one of the state’s best, has won four state championships this decade. The boys tennis team had a run of five straight state appearances as recent as two years ago. The boys soccer and volleyball teams aren’t strangers to success at a high level, either.

Basketball was due to have its time to shine. Maybe this is it.

The Spartans (11-0, 7-0 Greater Metro) enter Friday's home game against Sussex Hamilton as the state’s last undefeated team in Division 1. Better yet, East, which is ranked No. 2 in the Journal Sentinel area rankings, is ranked No. 1 in Division 1 in the wissports.net state coaches poll and No. 3 by The Associated Press.

It is the kind of success some hoped for under

second-year coach Joe Rux. A big winner at Manitowoc Roncalli, Rux has come in with a mentality and system that have helped East post its best start in recent memory.

“Brookfield East is a high-quality school. The kids are certainly driven to do well. It’s a high-achieving community, so from that aspect it is very similar to where I coached before,” Rux said.

“But there’s a lot of high-achieving communities with high expectations (where) kids don’t necessarily have success in athletics, so the rewarding part is watching the kids work hard, embrace each game and go out there and give their best effort.”

The strong start has allowed East to already equal its victory total of last season and puts it ahead of its average win total (9.4) for the past 15 seasons. The best year of that bunch was 2006-'07 when the Spartans went 17-7 (after a 7-0 start) and took fourth in the Greater Metro. The tally for that stretch includes 11 seasons below .500. In the years East finished over .500, it was usually only by one or two games.

So what has made this team special?

The Spartans are getting a strong senior season from Patrick Cartier, a 6-foot-8 forward averaging 19.9 points per game, and balanced performances among its perimeter players. There is a confidence that came from a number of close losses last season, growing patience offensively and increased grittiness, as Rux likes to say, on the defensive end.

There also is an in-the-moment mentality that Rux preaches continually.

“Coach Rux stays on us every day in practice,” said Cartier, a first-team allconference pick last season. “He doesn’t let us get comfortable with the success on the scoreboard we’re having.”

Rux is used to it. In his final nine seasons at Roncalli, his teams went 192-35 (.846) and reached the state tournament five times in his 16 years. The year before he arrived at East, the Spartans were 4-20 and didn’t win a game in the GMC.

Rux challenged them from the start.

“What we run on both sides of the ball is pretty high IQ, so the biggest challenge coming in the first (year) and even this year was can we get them to understand both sides of the ball system-wise so that they can play more fluidly and less robotically,” Rux said. “That’s a work in progress.”

That said, there has been plenty of improvement.

Junior guard Thomas Francken, thanks to better shooting and an improved understanding of the offense, has raised his average from 5.8 points per game last year to 11.6 this year.

Sophomore Michael Poker has managed the demands of playing point guard while lifting his average from 4.9 points to 7.4 per game. Also enjoying bumps in scoring are sophomore Sam McGath (5.6 to 9.1) and senior Peyton Simon (5.3 to 7.2), both guards.

From the standpoint of defense, opponents are averaging 45.8 points per game against East compared to 53 last season.

“It’s not one vs. one out there, it’s five on one, so we’re all helping each other out, rotating well on defense,” Cartier said. “It’s something we work on every day.”

East went through its first seven league games with an average margin of victory of 14 points. Four of those games were won by double digits. Brookfield Central and Marquette, on other hand, lost to East by just four points.

Now comes the hard part. The Spartans have to do it again. Friday’s game marks the end of the first half of the conference season. The second time can be difficult for teams, especially in a conference such as the Greater Metro, which has great parity.

So far, however, one team is standing out.