Glenbard East didn’t let the slow pace of the first quarter be too bothersome during Thursday night’s Upstate Eight East boys basketball game against West Chicago.

After the Rams grabbed a 4-2 lead on a pair of Michael Nee free throws just 2½ minutes into the contest, the Wildcats decided to hold the ball and take some time off the clock.

“Coach (Eric) Kelly was saying to us in the locker room that it’s kind of a respect thing when a team does that,” said Nee, who scored a game-high 12 points during the Rams’ 49-15 victory in West Chicago. “You’ve got to realize there’s a reason they’re doing it.”

Kelly agreed.

“You’ve got teams – they know there’s a talent discrepancy,” Kelly said. “We told our guys before the game that these teams are going to try anything to try and beat us.

“They will pull every stop, whether it’s a triangle-and-two or box-and-one, so we have to be disciplined, stay under control, and just play our game.”

While the Wildcats (6-13, 2-6) took more than two minutes off the clock, the Rams finished the quarter with four straight points, highlighted by Nee’s 3-pointer off a steal and feed from Jacob Marynowski, to grab an 8-2 advantage.

West Chicago attempted just two shots from the field in the first eight minutes.

After watching the Wildcats take another two-plus minutes off the clock in the early stages of the second quarter, the Rams closed the period on an 8-0 run that included back-to-back layups by Keenan House.

The Rams led 18-4 at halftime.

Glenbard East turned to its frontcourt players in the third quarter.

Senior 6-foot-5 center Sam Walton and 6-4 forward Marynowski combined to score the team’s first 13 points, as the Rams built a 31-9 lead.

“We think Sam (Walton) is an underrated player,” Kelly said. “When we play well, it all starts and ends with Sam and Jacob.”

Walton scored all 10 of his points during the Rams’ 25-6 third-quarter surge that extended their lead to 43-10.

“Sam has a couple of football offers,” the coach said. “He’s a very underrated kid from an athletic standpoint. Plus, he’s a great kid. Whatever we ask him to do, he does it.

“We don’t call a lot of plays for him, although we did call some tonight, and he came through for us.”

South Dakota commit Nee added six rebounds and a pair of steals, while Norman Loechel came off the bench to add five of the Rams’ 18 steals.

Extending their winning streak to eight, the Rams improved to 20-2, 8-0 in the UEC East.

“From the start of the season, one of our biggest goals has been at least 25 wins so 20 is just a steppingstone,” Nee said. “We knew at the start of the year that we had a chance to do this. We’ve been executing well recently.

“It’s a next-game mentality. Now we can get over this one and get the next one.”

Senior guard AJ Rotger led the Wildcats with 5 points.

https://www.dailyherald.com/20260122/boys-basketball/boys-basketball-glenbard-east-refuses-to-be-slowed-in-uec-east-win-over-west-chicago/