Nice tourn- around: St. Rita enjoys revival
No. 1
No team in the state resurrected its season more than St. Rita during the holidays.
The Mustangs were a consensus top- 25 team when the season began. But coach Gary DeCesare’s squad headed into the Hinsdale Central Holiday Tournament in a tailspin with a 4- 7 mark and having lost seven of its last eight.
Now St. Rita struts out of Hinsdale Central with a fresh basketball life after winning the tournament and beating two ranked teams — DePaul Prep and Bolingbrook — along the way.
“I thought we had hit rock- bottom,” DeCesare said of his team’s six- game losing streak earlier this season. “But we were defending in every game, and we were in every game. We just couldn’t ever get into any offensive flow.”
Although St. Rita didn’t have a player average double figures in scoring in the four victories at Hinsdale Central, the Mustangs did have six reach double figures.
“I knew we had a bunch of parts, but we had to put those parts together, get everyone on the same page,” DeCesare said.
Senior guard Jordan Matthews is the backbone, and sophomore guards Joel Watts and Alec Millender continue to show promise. But the arrow is pointing up because of the play of 6- 5 Javon Cooley at Hinsdale Central and the size and length that Cooley, 6- 5 Landen Gladney, 6- 7 Jeremiah Oden, 6- 5 Stedmon Ihejirika and 6- 8 Cameron Bartmann provide.
No. 2
Orr won the Class 2A state championship last season. The Spartans beat their last three state- tournament opponents by 38, 18 and 20 points.
Here’s some distressing news for any Class 2A team this March: After watching Orr win the ProvisoWest Holiday Tournament last week, this team is bigger, stronger, deeper, more athletic and clearly better than last season’s.
The mighty Chicago Public League is going to have its hands full trying to handle the physical and athletic punch that the 6- 5 tandem of Raekwon Drake and Dannie Smith provides for coach Lou Adams. In the title- game win against Young, they combined for 44 points, 23 rebounds and six blocks.
Class 2A schools simply don’t have an answer for this two- headed monster. In four tournament games, Drake averaged 15.8 points, 8.3 rebounds and three blocks, and Smith averaged 14.8 points, 10 rebounds and 2.4 assists.
No. 3
The Ryan Davis Player of the Year talk is picking up steam.
Simeon’s Talen Horton- Tucker made a significant statement during the Pontiac Holiday Tournament, and Morgan Park’s Ayo Dosunmu and Young’s Javon Freeman are very much in the picture. But Davis, who led Conant to five victories and a championship at the Jack Tosh Holiday Tournament at York, had an eye- opening run.
He has dropped weight, reshaped his body and is more athletic and confident. He began making a case to be included in playerofthe- year conversations with a strong start to the season.
Now the 6- 8 senior has a tournament title and whopping numbers to go with it.
The Vermont- bound big man averaged 24.8 points, 9.4 rebounds and four assists. He shot 58 percent from the field and made four three- pointers in the five wins at York.