MONTAGUE — Whitehall can go basket for basket with almost anyone in the state, but what really fires coach Christian Subdon up is when his team plays strong defense.
The Vikings displayed that quality in spades in the first half of last Thursday’s rivalry game at Montague, locking the Wildcats down to the tune of a 32-9 halftime lead before they cruised to a 66-35 win.
“We really sat down and defended,” Subdon said. “Giving up nine points in a (half) to a good team is not easy. I loved our defensive intensity. We were locked in on the game.”
The Vikings focused a lot of their defensive effort on Owen Raeth, knowing that he is capable of scoring points in bunches if he gets hot. While Raeth hit some difficult shots in the game and scored a team-best 11 points, the Vikings did what they set out to.
Whitehall’s rebounding was a huge factor in the game, and unsurprisingly it was junior star Camden Thompson leading the way on that front. Thompson delivered an outstanding triple-double, posting a career-high 27 rebounds, including 15 offensive boards, to go with a game-high 23 points and 10 assists. The rebounding efforts were emblematic of the style of play Whitehall employed.
“We play physical,” Subdon said. “That’s what we do. We play a physical style of basketball. Montague, for the most part, did a really good job trying to box us out, but we are relentless on the glass.”
Ca’Mar Ready, who has emerged as Whitehall’s #2 scorer behind Thompson, had a huge first half, scoring 10 of Whitehall’s 11 points in one stretch. He ended the night with 14 points.
“Most of my buckets come from transition and my teammates looking up the court when they rebound it,” the soft-spoken Ready said. “I played AAU a little bit over the summer, and that definitely helped.”
Montague coach Nick Thaler said it was apparent from the first half that the Vikings wanted the game more and told his team so in the locker room at halftime.
“We just weren’t playing tough enough,” Thaler said. “That’s hard to do when they consistently do that a lot. You see it on film and you know everything that’s coming, but when you’re playing, it’s totally different. Matching their physicality is going to be challenging for most teams, but at the end of the day, we have to do better, and that falls on me as the coach.”
Montague was able to get some offense going in the second half, and in fact much of the third quarter looked like a track meet. Whitehall continued to attack the basket as it had in the first half, but the Wildcats got their share of buckets too; it only took four minutes for them to eclipse their first-half point total.
Thaler credited both Raeth and Isaiah Atchison, who had six points and seven boards while shadowing Thompson the entire night, with strong games.
“We have to do a better job collectively of helping Isaiah get rebounds,” Thaler said. “Usually whoever wants the ball more rebounding-wise is going to get those balls.”
Whitehall, meanwhile, is off to the start it wanted as the Vikings pursue the outright conference title this year. The Vikings split two games with Ludington last year and both teams swept the rest of their West Michigan Conference Lakes foes. The focus required to do that, Subdon said, has made it easy to keep his team focused on that task again this year.
“You’ve got to come in laser-focused on the team in front of you because if you don’t, you could lose,” Subdon said. “We’ve got to be locked in and focused on the task ahead of us. I think we’ve done a good job thus far. We’ve just got to keep them engaged.”
The team is eager to measure itself against larger schools at this week’s holiday tournament at Cornerstone University, with matchups scheduled against Hamtramck and East Grand Rapids.
“I’m super excited to see a team from the east side that’s going to be all in our shirts,” Subdon said of Hamtramck. “We’re going to see how tough we really are. We’ve got some huge schools; EGR is 2,800 students. I’m excited to see how we stack up. Last year, we didn’t stack up great in the Christmas tournament. We kind of got knocked down a notch.”
