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WOODSTOCK – With his black headband, prescription goggles, light mustache, thin frame and low-key demeanor, Woodstock senior guard Joey Nitz may not look like a player that basketball opponents would necessarily need to be concerned about on the court.
“A little old school,” Blue Streaks coach Ryan Starnes said.
Don’t be fooled by Nitz’s appearance.
“We call him the silent assassin,” Starnes said with a laugh.
Nitz’s play on the court often screams, as it did Saturday, when his effort off the bench killed Crystal Lake Central‘s hopes of winning for the second time in less than 24 hours. Nitz had 10 points, six rebounds and a big fourth-quarter assist, as the Blue Streaks rallied for a 46-43 win in a nonconference game.
“I just try to win, do whatever I can do, make shots, move the ball,” said Nitz, who stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 150 pounds.
In a game in which its two best scorers, Max Beard (13 points) and Collin Greenlee (12 points), combined to shoot 9 of 31 from the floor, Woodstock (11-7) got big boosts from unsung types Nitz and Ayden Cummings.
“He’s kind of a jack-of-all-trades,” Starnes said of Nitz. “He can drive, he can shoot it a little bit, he guards, he rebounds. He doesn’t really look like a basketball player. I think it catches people off guard, for sure.”
The 6-1 Cummings, a thickly built senior, came off the bench to grab seven rebounds (five on the offensive glass) and score four points.
“Hard-nosed kid, he takes charges, he plays good defense, he offensive-rebounds,” Starnes said. “He’s a huge part of our team.”
Central (6-12) looked at halftime like it was en route to winning for the fifth time in its past seven games. The Tigers led 33-24, as eight players scored, led by Bud Shanahan’s seven points coming off the bench.
Woodstock’s man-to-man defense was more effective after halftime, limiting the Tigers to 10 points in winning for the sixth time in its last seven games.
“We won the game with defense,” Starnes said. “It was a little bit of pride, a little bit of scouting report. We gave up too many left-handed drives to lefties in the first half, [and] we gave up too many right-handed drives to righties. We talked about it at halftime. We were like, ‘Listen. They’re on pace to score 66. We ain’t going to win.‘ We found a lineup that we rolled with most of the second half, and it was good.”
While neither team shot well from beyond the arc – Woodstock was 4 of 24, while Central was 2 of 20 – Tigers coach Dan Oziminski pointed to offensive rebounds as the difference.
Woodstock hustled for 21 offensive boards.
“That’s the ballgame,“ Oziminski said. ”For us, it’s better positioning, having urgency."
“We were just stopping them from getting easy buckets,” Nitz said. “In the first half they kept getting layups, so in the second half we just tried to keep them out of the paint and make them take tough shots.”
Greenlee took over offensively for Woodstock in the third quarter after he scored just one point in the first half. His two 3-pointers accounted for the only scoring by either side in the last four minutes of the third.
Greenlee’s third 3, with 2:14 left in the fourth, came off a pass from Nitz and stretched the Blue Streaks' lead to 44-40.
Beard’s two free throws with 22.3 seconds left made it 46-43, and Central missed a defended 3 at the buzzer.
Avery Lee led the Tigers with nine points. Shanahan finished with eight, and Danny Spychala and Johnny Geisser each had seven. JJ Parrish (three points) threw down a dunk and blocked two shots.