Boys basketball: Bryce Salek, Yorkville keep soaring, slam Oswego

OSWEGO – Bryce Salek knew his time on the court was numbered Saturday, but the Yorkville senior also had unfinished business.

A missed dunk was eating on him.

Finally, with just under four minutes left, the 6-foot-5 Salek rose up, threw down a two-handed dunk and lingered on the rim for a moment as he looked below.

“I do like attacking,” Salek said. “I wanted to dunk the whole game and I finally got it. It’s like a mindset every game. I have adrenalin until it’s gone. I just like to dunk.”

That aggressive attitude is contagious on the Foxes, who are soaring into the season’s stretch run. Yorkville followed up a string of three big wins over the last week with a tidy 56-34 win over host Oswego Saturday in the Southwest Prairie Conference.

Salek had 13 points, five rebounds and three steals, Illinois recruit Jason Jakstys 12 points and eight rebounds, Michael Dunn 10 points and Jory Boley nine for Yorkville (14-8, 7-4). The Foxes scored the game’s first eight points and raced out to a 15-2 lead in running their win streak to five straight.

“We want to just keep building what we’ve done,” Salek said. “We want to keep that streak going, get in the playoffs, get a better seed than what we should have and finish out the year.”

It’s been a busy, but productive stretch for Yorkville, further distancing itself from a 3-5 start that coincided with a rash of injuries, Salek included.

The Foxes’ five wins come during a run of 10 games in 20 days, with four games in the upcoming week, three on the road. Yorkville was coming off a 57-50 win over West Aurora on the strength of Jakstys’ 28 points, avenging a 22-point loss in November that may have been a low point.

“Just put this one in the bank, move on to the next one and try to do the same thing,” Yorkville coach John Holakovsky said. “If you look at our schedule, big picture it’s pretty daunting. You can stress yourself out. But just take it one game at a time, focus on that next one. We’re playing some really good basketball right now. We want to keep the momentum going, keep stacking those wins.”

Five Foxes scored in the first quarter Saturday, with Salek, Kaevian Johnson and Boley all scoring on driving layups and Jakstys scoring the first basket in the lane. That inside-out approach is Yorkville at its best, and set up four 3-point shots, Jakstys, Salek and Dunn each accounting for one as the Foxes led 31-15 at halftime and maintained that arm’s length advantage.

“That is our strength, every single guy – we are trying to live in the paint. It is everybody,” Holakovsky said. “When teams start over-helping that’s when we get wide-open shooters. That’s who we are and we have to stay that way.”

Oswego (4-17, 2-9) was coming off a 54-52 win over Plainfield North Friday, but the momentum failed to carry over.

The Panthers missed their first eight shots, and shot 1-for-13 in a first quarter in which they turned the ball over six times. The struggles leaked over to the defensive end where Yorkville was able to get to the rim early and often.

“We couldn’t shoot; that’s kind of been one of our things,” Oswego coach Chad Pohlmann said. “Last night we made I think seven 3s. I don’t know if we had one tonight until the fourth quarter. Points are at a premium for us, however we can get them. In these types of losses like tonight when we don’t make shots we get down and we don’t bring energy to the defensive end. It wasn’t good all-around.

“First half we didn’t stop dribble penetration with resistance. They [the Foxes] are playing better for sure, but I was hoping tonight we’d bring some of that energy and grit from Friday’s game and for whatever reason we didn’t have it.”

Dasean Patton provided much of the good for Oswego with 18 points, 14 coming in the middle two quarters. Pohlmann also saluted the aggressive mindset off the bench of 6-foot-11 junior Hunter O’Neill, who had four points and six rebounds.

“Dasean battled. He continued to do a good job and attacked,” Pohlmann said. “I was proud of Hunter. He challenged Jakstys. He didn’t play a lot last year as a sophomore, and he’s really inexperienced. To have that confidence, to want that challenge, is big for us. You can see the light bulb slowly turn on.”

Yorkville, which plays at Minooka Tuesday, has certainly seen it turn on.

“As soon as I came back I expected to have it back right away, but we lost the first game,” Salek said. “The York tournament was a good turning point. It took a little time but now we’re rolling.”