WHITEHALL — After a pair of tough losses earlier in the week, Whitehall came out of the locker room Friday night playing like a group with a new lease on life, hitting six first-quarter three-pointers and cruising to an 81-41 win over Fremont.
The Vikings' seven seniors all got to play heavy minutes in the win, which was the team's final regular-season home game. Whitehall will also host the district tournament.
"We have seven seniors and I wanted to make sure all of them played," senior Brock Morningstar said. "I didn't even want to play in the second half. I told Coach that. Those
are guys that work harder than me at practice and they deserve the spot
over me. I let Christian Gomez go in my spot because I felt like he
deserved it."
Motivated by the desire to let the reserve seniors have a lot of time on the court, Whitehall (16-5, 10-1 West Michigan Conference Lakes) stormed ahead quickly, scoring an amazing 30 points in the first quarter. Morningstar, Hunter Osborne and Cy Black each hit two treys to help build an insurmountable 30-8 lead.
It may have appeared coincidental that Whitehall shot so well early on, but coach Christian Subdon said it was a byproduct of the team taking care of the basketball, which was a problem in the previous game against Manistee.
"We really valued the ball tonight, and we
haven't done that in a few games," Subdon said. "Weirdly enough, shots went in. We can
really shoot it if we move the ball and get open shots."
The onslaught never let up for Whitehall, even as the team did a lot of substituting to get everybody into the game. Almost everyone on the roster scored, including Alex Winczewski, Evan Thomas, Nolan Napier and foreign exchange student Kiyan Kirsche. The Vikings shot 56% from the field and 12-of-21 from three-point distance. As is their custom in such situations, the starters spent much of the time the reserves were playing on their feet cheering their teammates.
Camden Thompson led Whitehall with 22 points, eight rebounds and six steals. Osborne added 12 points. Morningstar had six steals and five assists to go with his eight points.
It was a celebratory night on a night, senior night, that is often a font of emotion as players see the time on their home court drawing to a close. Morningstar is planning to play college baseball, but has loved his time on the court.
"It was a little emotional, (a reminder) that I won't be playing here
much longer," Morningstar said. "I'm excited for the next chapter in my life in baseball,
but I love Subdon and I love our coaching staff, and I'm Whitehall
forever. I'm going to miss it all."
Of course, emotions can't get in the way of a team's preparation for the postseason, and after upset district defeats the past two seasons, the Viking seniors are eager to go out on a high note this year. Whitehall hosting districts should be an advantage, but a bigger one, Subdon said, might be that the team is going back to what works on defense rather than trying to mix it up.
"We had bad coaching, honestly," Subdon said in a self-criticism. "We
switched up our defense and went away from the aggressive, switching
style of defense that we've been known for the last
two or three years...We're really going to get back to, everyone's going to
know what we're doing, but we're going to be great at it."
He added that the team's focus is on earning more practice time together, which of course can only be done with wins starting next week.
"After this week, we've got six practices total guaranteed," Subdon said. "We'd like to
get a seventh, and then after that, we'd like to get an eighth. That's what we're going to work on, just getting more practices."
