The Whaler boys basketball team won their season opening game against the Tri-County Cougars handily Saturday afternoon, sailing home with a 71-29 victory behind sophomore guard JD Heneke’s team-high 22 points.
“It is going to take us probably another three weeks to really start to click as a team,” head coach Willis Ferreira said. “But we did what we had to do. I thought Carlos Aguilar really got us off on a good foot to begin the game with that three to kick things off and then he made some other plays as well. He was really aggressive early on while I think the rest of our guys sort of eased into it.”
Aguilar had nine points in the first quarter, leading Nantucket to a 22-8 lead after one quarter of play. But nothing came easy for Nantucket. Forward Karson Wellington did a little bit of everything in the opening quarter, scoring three points while notching a pair of assists offensively.
Defensively, Wellington led an aggressive defensive team effort with a pair of steals that helped keep the Cougars offense in check while Nantucket tried to get into a rhythm.
“I thought they battled us in that first quarter pretty good, which I liked because we had to work for it,” Ferreira said. “Karson does everything for us. He defends, he rebounds, he makes great decisions with the ball most of the time, he is a leader. He really gets us where we need to be defensively and is that vocal leader for us on defense. His offense is only going to get better as the season goes on.”
The second quarter was the Heneke show. Heneke entered the game two minutes into the quarter and went on to score 19 points while making five three-point shots.
“Heneke is one of the better shooters I have ever had,” Ferreira said. “I see it every day at practice. He wants to be more than just a shooter so a lot of times he puts the ball on the floor and tries to get to the rim. But I have been yelling at him a lot to just be a shooter because that is what the team needs. I have a lot of guys that can get to the rim and score. He understands that though and what his role is. Once some of these older guys graduate and move on, that is when we will need him to do both.”
The Whalers dominated the second quarter and took a 45-17 lead into halftime. In the second half Ferreira went to his bench and rotated a lot of players in and out. The Whalers played their best defensive quarters of the game in second half, allowing just six points in each quarter.
“I think for the first time ever in my time as a coach I truly have 13 guys who can play and won’t hurt you,” Ferreira said. “So it is about getting everyone on the same page so we can smoothly transition some guys out of the lineup for rest without the product on the court being any different. But again I think I have the guys that will allow me to do that. I think every player on this team can have a positive impact on the court.”
Ferreira said the free throw shooting will need to improve if his team wants to make a deep tournament run later on in the year. The Whalers shot 33 percent from the line (6 for 18).
“We can’t shoot six for 18 against the teams we are playing this year and expect to win a lot of games,” Ferreira said. “We left way too many points out there today so hopefully we can clean that up. We spend a lot of time in practice practicing our free throws.”
The Whalers relied on the three-point shot for a lot of their scoring Saturday, making 11 of them on 29 attempts (38 percent).
The Whalers face a tough challenge tomorrow, December 21, when they travel to Sandwich to take on the Blue Knights at 3:30 p.m.
“This is a big game for us,” Ferreira said. “It is still early in the year but it is going to be competitive and show us what we are made of, whether we can overcome things, and we will need to play tough for 32 minutes. We will need to defend well and we will need to score better. Aside from the missed free throws, we probably missed 10 easy hoops (Saturday). This will be a good test for us.”
