Boys basketball notes: Dasean Patton putting up huge numbers as Oswego finally breaks into win column

Dasean Patton and Oswego had their resilience tested to the extreme during the first month of the season.

The Panthers lost their first 12 games.

Patton, a 6-foot-6 junior and their best player, was off to a tremendous start personally. Then he fell and sprained his wrist during the fifth game, at Plainfield North.

“The first half of the season, it didn’t go as planned,” Patton said. “The injury very much affected my game. It messed with my overall game. I couldn’t shoot the ball the way I would have liked.”

Patton kept playing but didn’t overdo it in workouts, patiently waiting out the wrist to let it heal. He circled Christmas as a date to be better. Indeed, he was in peak form holiday week.

Patton scored 27 points in Oswego’s first win, in overtime over Dunlap in the second game of the State Farm Holiday Classic. The next day, he exploded for a career-high 36 points in a 71-64 win over Addison Trail as Oswego (3-14) finished 2-2 in Bloomington-Normal.

Carrying that momentum out of the holidays, Patton went for 26 with 12 rebounds and six assists to beat Plainfield Central last Friday, Oswego’s third win in four games after the 0-12 start.

“We’ve shown flashes the last few games here and there, and Dasean is a big reason,” Oswego coach Chad Pohlmann said. “He’s getting to the point, he’s put a lot of work in his craft, that I feel like he can score at all three levels. He can shoot the three, he has a decent midrange game and he can go down on the block and can score inside.”

Patton said the scouting report on him last year identified him as a post, but he has a perimeter game uncommon for a player his size at the high school level.

That has roots to when he was in sixth and seventh grade, when the only thing Patton said he could do was shoot the ball. Middle school he wasn’t that tall, but his eighth grade COVID year Patton had a growth spurt from 6-foot to 6-foot-3.

“As I got bigger, the shooting came along with my game,” Patton said.

Patton came into his own down the stretch last year in his first varsity season, averaging nearly 20 points per game over the last month. He scored 20 points in a quarter one game. On a young team that has been snakebit by injury – three starters were either sick or hurt in Oswego’s loss to Metea Valley this week – Patton is averaging 17 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals.

“The other part of his game is he is also a very willing passer,” Pohlmann said. “Against Metea he had 22, 20 of them in the second half, and got to the foul line. He definitely has some serious ability to score from all levels. It’s been nice to see him take that jump. We lost a bunch of seniors, had some injuries, so we’ve told Dasean that everybody is coming after you. When he is mentally engaged like he has been the last couple games the sky is the limit.”

A loaded sectional at East Aurora

The IHSA in mid-December released its sectional assignments for boys and girls basketball. To say the 18-team Class 4A sectional at East Aurora is loaded is an understatement.

A who’s who includes Waubonsie Valley, currently undefeated, defending state runner-up Benet, who was unbeaten until Dec. 30 and Downers Grove North, fourth in Class 4A last year. Then there is Bolingbrook, a resurgent West Aurora and Downers Grove South, and Neuqua Valley and Metea Valley from what appears to be a strong DuPage Valley Conference.

On top of that is Oswego East, which just knocked off Bolingbrook on a buzzer-beater, and Yorkville, which is coming on now that it’s at full strength and will host a regional.

“I think it’s the toughest sectional in the state,” Pohlmann said. “It will be a challenge for teams to win a regional.”

Shootout season

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend has become, next to the week between Christmas and New Year’s, one of the busiest of the basketball season.

Yorkville returns to Geneva for Geneva’s 5th MLK Day of Hoops where the Foxes will face Stevenson at 1 p.m. Monday in the fourth of eight games.

Yorkville next Saturday will face Young in the When Sides Collide Shootout at Benet, a mega-event with the marquee attraction being Benet against Thornton and Illinois recruit Morez Johnson. Oswego East, meanwhile, will face York at the 30th Batavia Night of Hoops.