Braydon Porter is the kind of player that when he gets the ball in the open court, with a clear path to the basket, the crowd holds its breath in anticipation.

He has a simple thought.

“I just want to break the rim,” Porter said.

Porter, Yorkville’s 6-foot-4 sophomore, has a history of run-ins with rims.

He broke the rim once at the YMCA. His school’s basket was at the business end of another Porter monster jam Thursday.

When he soared in for a dunk off a steal in the first minute of the second quarter, the basket support rocked back and forth. Yorkville AD Luke Engelhardt had to give it a quick look to check on the basket’s condition as play resumed.

“I think I was just running too fast and I went up and all the momentum took the rim back,” Porter said. “It seemed like when I was holding on to the rim it was falling a little bit. I had to jump off real quick and I saw it rock back.”

All’s well with the rim. Same for the Foxes, after their own wobbles this season.

Porter scored 10 of his 12 points in the first half in which Yorkville roared out to a 22-point lead on visiting Minooka. The Foxes went on to a surprisingly one-sided 54-30 win between two Southwest Prairie Conference clubs that came in with .500 records.

Yorkville coach John Holakovsky’s most sweaty moment was that dunk, and the rim.

He recalled that right around this time last season, in a game against Plainfield East, the same rim broke on a dunk by Porter or Joey Jakstys.

“We had a 45-minute delay at halftime – it was that rim," Holakovsky said. “We always practice at the other basket because we know that rim, the feeling of it when you dunk, that support, it just feels different.

“In my head we were up 14-2 after that dunk and I was thinking this could be the ballgame, we might have to come back another day and this will ruin all our momentum.”

Gabe Sanders added 10 points, Frankie Pavlik nine and Nate Kubin eight while Jakstys had six points and five rebounds for Yorkville (10-9, 7-3). Jackson Miranda and Nehemiah Brown each had six for Minooka (10-11, 5-5).

Porter, who has talked to Missouri in the recruitment process but anticipates things ramping up during AAU season, is clearly at his best in the open court with his athleticism and power.

He showcased that Thursday right away, taking the opening tip and spinning in for a three-point play four seconds in. He took a steal, one of his four, and went coast-to-coast for a layup to close out a 12-2 first quarter, and started the second with his dunk.

“When he can get going up and down the court, he’s a really fun player to watch,” Holakovsky said. “He has got a little better with some defensive positioning, which has led to steals.”

Indeed, the Foxes’ transition game is fun to watch, and it starts with a renewed defense.

“When we struggled a lot more it was playing in the gaps,” Porter said. “I feel like defensively everybody can play defense on their own, on an island. It’s just the helpside, things like that we have really worked hard on in practice, getting in the gaps and I feel like that’s how I got that steal and runout.”

It’s helped to be healthy.

A rash of sickness ran through the Foxes last month, and Jakstys has dealt with injury. Holakovsky said Yorkville went 14 days without having a full team for practice. It showed at the Jack Tosh Holiday Classic, where the Foxes dropped their first three games.

But Yorkville is 7-3 at full strength, the losses to ranked teams Bolingbrook and Neuqua Valley, and a game the day after Christmas.

The Foxes are still not fully healthy, backup point guard Alonn Flint is in concussion protocol. But they’ve won five of seven, and don’t look like a team that’s reached its ceiling.

“Random things went on, flu went through our team, we had so much illness and injury and we had not practiced together in so long and if you looked at our defense it showed, we got carved up at the Tosh,” Holakovsky said. “We were piecemealing it together, but we’re playing better.

“100% there is a ceiling we have not reached. I think there is definitely more meat on the bone.”

On the flip side, Minooka’s loss was its fourth in five games, and in the last three losses the Indians haven’t broken 40 points.

They shot 3-for-22 in the first half and it didn’t get much better after that. Minooka even had three shot clock violations.

“Shooting 9-for-46 or whatever we shot is not a good recipe,” Minooka coach Brett Hespell said. “I don’t know why we missed so many shots. Got to find a way to make them. Yorkville played tough defense, but we have seen tough defenses before. Have to step up and make shots.”