Boys Basketball: Oswego East puts on a show in crosstown blowout

OSWEGO – Any concerns about Oswego East playing well in front of an electric, loud crowd were gone shortly after Mekhi Lowery’s two-handed jam in the opening minute of Friday’s Southwest Prairie Conference game at cross town rival Oswego.

The Wolves left no doubt about it, putting on a show in their neighbor’s gym, keeping their perfect record intact while breezing to an 82-49 victory.

“I told the guys before the game that when you get out there take a look around because you guys haven’t experienced this yet,” Wolves coach Ryan Velasquez said. “Take it in and then you got to focus and we got a game to play and you’ve got to lock in.”

Oswego East (9-0, 4-0) was locked in from start to finish, jumping to a 21-4 lead, scoring the first nine points of the second half and sharing the ball throughout as 11 players scored with Lowery (16 points), DeVon Oregon (14 points) and Patrick Robinson (10 points) leading the way.

“We game prepped for this like any other team this week,” Robinson said. “We knew regardless of Oswego’s record or our record that they were still going to come out hard because of this type of game and this kind of energy, so we wanted to come out hard and bring it to them.”

Oswego (1-7, 1-3) struggled in eluding the quick-handed pressure defense of the Wolves, succumbing to 18 turnovers, which also made it difficult to put together any real scoring runs to claw back into the game.

The Panthers scored six straight points early in the second quarter but those kinds of runs were limited while defensively they could not slow down a Wolves team that scored 21 or more points in all but the second quarter.

“We’ve been talking about playing consistent throughout four quarters and we understand there are going to be highs and lows,” Velasquez. ”Don’t let the lows be too low and the highs go too high. I was proud of the effort. It’s not perfect but we have time to work on some things and it’s exciting to be playing these games.”

After Lowery’s second flush of the game gave the Wolves a 46-21 lead with 5:45 left in the third quarter, Oswego’s student section seemingly waived the white flag, beginning the chant “Let’s play football.”

Oswego got the better of Oswego East on the gridiron on Oct. 15, winning 38-14 at Ken Pickerill Stadium.

“We were waiting on that and we knew they were going to have to bring up football because they were losing that bad and needed to say something,” Robinson said. “It is what it is. Hopefully we’ll get football next year.”

Rather than being overwhelmed by playing with so many eyes on them, the Wolves treated it as a great opportunity to show the community what they can do.

“Me and my guys have been waiting for this season and this was our first time playing in front of this big of a crowd ever,” Robinson said. “We were ready for it and we didn’t hesitate bringing it straight to them.”

And it wasn’t just the starters either as the Oswego East bench combined for 31 points.

“We expect when our guys come in that we shouldn’t miss a beat,” Velasquez said. “We have 31 games slated this year and we want to be able to spell some guys and still keep doing what we having going out on the court. It’s being together and connected out there and I think our guys are understanding when we click we can be very good.”

Deakon Tonielli led the Panthers with 16 points while Jordan Brooks and Max Niesman each chipped in with nine points.