MONTAGUE — Whitehall hasn't yet been able to fully unlock the kind of potent offense it's become known for the past few years, but Vikings' coach Christian Subdon was pleased to see his team make up for it Friday night against rival Montague with intense defensive effort.
It was that effort that led to several Wildcat turnovers in the third quarter and enabled Whitehall to break the game open on the way to a 64-38 win.
Whitehall had already gone into the halftime locker room with momentum, answering a quick five-point spurt from the Wildcats' Cole Herremans and Noah Raeth with a 9-0 run of its own to go into the break ahead 31-16. The Vikes (3-3, 2-1 West Michigan Conference Lakes) then harassed Montague ballhandlers into giveaways in the third quarter, setting up some easy baskets on the other end. The fast breaks bore some resemblance to the successful Whitehall teams this year's group is hoping to emulate.
"We started pushing the ball up the sideline and getting easier buckets," Subdon said. "It's easier to go against one than it is five. We started doing those things. They're kind of maturing before your eyes.
"I thought Alex Winczewski played a really good game. I have no idea how many points he had, but he was on the floor for balls. He was tipping passes. He made a couple shots. Those are the things that we have to continue to do if we want to be where we're at the end of the season."
Winczewski had a big trey early in the game that served as a quick answer to one by Montague's Cooper Bradley. Bradley's shot put a stop to a 12-2 Whitehall run that gave the Vikings a sizable early edge.
The two teams played very physically early in the third, both entering the bonus before the halfway point of the quarter. However, things evened out later and they only combined to shoot eight free throws in the quarter.
For Subdon, the focus on defense was intentional. He took a 68-66 defeat to Fremont earlier this month personally, and after a later loss to North Muskegon, the message seemed to sink in with the team as well.
"We didn't practice at all the day after the (North Muskegon) game," Subdon said. "We just watched film. We talked about, 'Does our effort match our goals?' and they weren't matching them. Until we get to that, that's my job. I have to make sure if that isn't happening that I have to hold them accountable. I told them, 'You can either take it as me yelling at you, or you can take it as me holding you accountable for the goals that you want to achieve.'
"We focused on effort, intensity and coachability. They bought into it at practice (Wednesday). We had a great day of practice, and we got better."
On Montague's side, the Wildcats (0-6, 0-3 WMC Lakes) may be frustrated after heading into the season looking to play at a fast pace and score a lot of points, but coach Nick Thaler remains optimistic in the long term, pointing to the four games this season in which his team has been very competitive.
"They have goals and expectations, and obviously we haven't met those goals and expectations," Thaler said. "You look back, sure, we lost to Hart and we lost to Whitehall. We're right there in our other four games, and it could be a completely different scenario record-wise. It's better for us to learn from these things, which we are; we're doing some better things on both sides of the floor, except we're not scoring. We're executing well defensively, and we're executing more offensively. We're just not getting clean looks at the basket, so that makes it challenging."
The 'Cats tried to pressure Whitehall point guard Rex Pumford early, and for some brief spans early on it seemed to work, as Montague hung in there. However, the offensive struggles eventually caught up to the Wildcats, and on defense the team struggled to slow down post players Anderson and Evan Thomas. Thaler said the team hasn't yet grown fully comfortable playing together.
"Sometimes I felt like we were trying to do too much individually versus doing it together," Thaler said. "We're still working on those things. Obviously, when they're trying to do things individually, it's a little bit harder. We're still trying to find our identity on the offensive end of the floor. We get to go into break now and fix those things to work on some fundamentals and work on an offense. We'll figure it out. I believe in our team that we can be successful and do some nice things."
Thomas led all players with 16 points in the win, and Anderson had 13, with nine rebounds. Hunter Osborne chipped in nine points and was a menace on defense with six steals. For the Wildcats, Cole Herremans scored 10 points, and Karter Johnson and Bradley had seven apiece.
