Ty Steponaitis is a volleyball player by trade, one who just so happens to play basketball. And it’s a good thing for Woodstock that he does.
The 6-foot-3 senior delivered a powerful, rim-and-backboard rattling dunk early in the fourth quarter Wednesday night. The momentum of that play, combined with a stellar defensive effort by the Blue Streaks, led them to a 54-45 Kishwaukee River Conference victory over Johnsburg in the Shipley Gymnasium.
Woodstock (12-8, 4-2) handed the Skyhawks (13-9, 5-1) their first league defeat thanks to Steponaitis, who scored all seven of his points in the fourth quarter and combined with Max Beard, who scored 18 points, to tally 14 of their team’s 17 fourth-quarter points.
Woodstock held a slim 37-33 lead at the end of three quarters, but Steponaitis took a pass in the right corner and drove baseline for his pivotal dunk that sparked a Blue Streak surge where they opened up as much as a 10-point lead (49-39) with 2:55 to play. The Skyhawks never got closer than seven in the game’s final minutes.
“Whenever I’m in the corner, it’s my spot and I look to drive baseline,’’ said Steponaitis, who missed his team’s last two games for a volleyball tournament in Phoenix. “It felt like it fired up the team and took a weight off us. It changed the atmosphere.”
Beard, a silky smooth 6-3 junior, was held to two points in the first half thanks to Johnsburg’s stifling box-and-one defense, but he broke loose for 16 second-half points and made 5-of-8 free throws down the stretch.
“I actually take that (defense) as a compliment, and I try to get my teammates involved,” Beard said. “I started demanding the ball inside (in the second half). It’s all about read and react. And (Steponaitis’s) dunk…I’ve seen it a million times in practice, but it was the best dunk I’ve see face-to-face in a game. Ever.”
Johnsburg was led by powerful junior Josh Kaunas’s 17 points while Jayce Schmitt added nine. It was not the Skyhawks’ best night offensively as they never scored more than 12 points in any quarter.
“We were way out of sync,” Johnsburg coach Mike Toussaint said. “The way (Woodstock) plays defense we should be able to penetrate and get threes, but we got none and we made a lot of silly mistakes.”
Woodstock coach Ryan Starnes said his team’s success came partly from defying traditional basketball logic of “help defense” and rather placed the emphasis on individual defense.
“When you play Johnsburg you know they’re going to shoot a lot of threes, that’s who they are and that’s what they do,” Starnes said. “The natural instinct when they drive is to help, and that’s what they want you to do so they can kick the ball and shoot threes. So we worked this week on playing good individual defense and not helping so they couldn’t kick it and shoot it.”
For the night, Johnsburg connected on only four three-pointers - one in each quarter. Woodstock, on the other hand, made six from long range including three from Rian Hahn-Clifton (10 points) while Liam Laidig added eight points. But it was Beard’s second-half resurgence that sparked the Streaks.
“Max had zero rebounds at halftime and had eight in the second half. He was way more active,” said Starnes, whose team had lost seven of his last nine contests. “I’m in his ear all the time, but I believe you coach your best players the hardest. And we’re not even through the conference one full time so there’s a lot of basketball left to play. Hopefully, this gives us a lift.”