On Friday, Feb. 7, the Wheaton Warrenville South Tigers basketball team took down the Batavia Bulldogs in an intense 65-59 game at Batavia High School. 

After a slow start, the Tigers found themselves in a situation that had them trailing 3-12 after a quarter of play. During the intermission after the first quarter, coach Mike Healy was livid and made sure all the guys were focused. In response, junior Evan England scored the first three-pointer of the quarter to shift the momentum towards the Tigers. Yonatan Algawerash, Ben Bastian and Jaylen Brown also hit crucial three-pointers to give the Tigers a 28-22 lead at halftime. Throughout the rest of the game, the Tigers rode on their momentum to gain a dominant 42-29 lead at the end of the third quarter. Towards the end of the game, Batavia went on a scoring run, but the Tigers held them to 65-59 at the end of regulation.

“In the first quarter, they were hitting all of their shots, and just like the Geneva game, we could not get anything going,” said Jason Haw, a senior power forward for the Tigers. “Going into the second quarter, we shifted our focus and energy to the defensive side of the ball.” Certainly, the Tigers defense played aggressively in the second quarter. As a result, the players were able to push the ball in transition and get easy points off of their stops.

After the Tiger’s big win, they improved to 17-9 throughout the season (5-5 in conference play). Next Friday, Feb. 14, the Tigers play their crosstown rivals, Wheaton North, in one of the last games of their season. “We are just going to try and take the momentum we found in that [Batavia] game and carry it through this week of practice, into the [Wheaton] North game and hopefully throughout the rest of the season,” said Haw.