Metea Valley’s Matt Helwig saw it coming.
“We had a good week of practice, probably our best week in a while, leading up to this,” Helwig said. “We were focused. We’ve got to get back up in the standings in the conference.”
Helwig, a senior guard, scored 11 points and played a key role against Waubonsie on Friday night as host Metea hit the right chords with a 75-48 home victory that had eight Mustangs in the scorebook by halftime.
Metea (6-7, 2-3) took control in the second quarter, turning an eight-point lead into a 16-point cushion. And Helwig was in the middle of things.
A steal and transition layup by Ashton Creal put Metea ahead 23-13 before Helwig connected on back-to-back 3-pointers for a commanding 29-13 advantage with 2:10 left before halftime.
“Those 3s kind of separated us from them, and we just kept moving forward,” Helwig said. “My job is to shoot 3s and make ’em. My teammates have confidence for me to shoot. I have confidence to keep shooting even if they’re not falling.”
“I thought it all started on the defensive end,” Metea coach Bob Vozza said. “We had opportunities to kind of keep them down.”
Metea extended a 33-17 halftime lead to 53-33 going into the fourth quarter. Forward Jeremy Hunter scored 12 of his game-high 16 points in the third quarter to help put the game out of reach.
Creal (10 points) and Malik Hall (4 points, 9 rebounds) also finished with important numbers.
“We had lost two in a row in the Christmas tournament (at York), so we wanted to come out and win a couple games,” Hunter said. “We know who we have on our schedule. We try to prepare for it as much as we can.”
“Right before break, we kind of broke through and got a win against Wheaton North,” Vozza said. “I think we played well at York. We went 2-2, played four pretty strong teams. I felt like we’re playing well. We had a good week of practice, and hopefully we can continue to move forward.”
Friday’s win was the 100th for Vozza at Metea Valley.
“It’s a blessing to have the players we’ve had go through the program and buy in these first six years,” he said.
Jaquan Bowman contributed a team-best 14 points and nine rebounds for Waubonsie (4-11, 0-5). Eric Cannon had 10 points.
“We knew we couldn’t play in transition with them,” Waubonsie coach Chaz Taft said. “They get a lot of buckets in transition. We wanted to make it a halfcourt game just because they score so much in transition. We just kept turning it over.”
Tim Tierney is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.