Craig handles West with Ease

As I had predicted Janesville Craig was able to defeat Madison West by 21 points by winning 79-58. The surprise though was that West was able to play with Craig throughout the first half and was winning a good portion of the half. In the first half West was patient in there offense and were able to find openings in Craig's zone to hit 15 footers. In the second half Craig was able to jump out early which got West nervous and they started playing alot of one on one and shooting alot of three pointers. These long shots resulted in long rebounds which led to easy baskets for Craig. In the fourth quarter West tried to press, which Craig was able to beat easily and led to more easy baskets.

Throughout the entire game Janesville Craig was able to pound the ball inside to 6'6 junior center Jojo Pregont. Pregont finished with 25 points and would of easily scored 30 but, was hampered by foul trouble early in the game. Pregont looked even better then the last time I saw him. He is very tough to stop inside and is always working hard to get position and find an opening to receive the ball. 6'6 senior forward Lucas Burns was his usually smooth self hitting every open look he was given. Burns is hands down the best spot up shooter I've seen this year. Cooper Cullen the other 6'6 star I was interested to see let me down a bit. Cullen handled the ball very well for a 6'6 player but, did nothing other then bring the ball up the court. He rarely looked to shoot the ball and never penetrated. The big surprise of the game was 6'3 junior forward Kyle Goike. The first time I saw Goike, I saw him as just a roll player that played defense, rebound, and took care of the ball. This game though Goike really looked good as he was able to drop the outside jumper and drive to the hoop and finish, Goike really carried Craig at times.

Madison West while looking good in the first half couldn't keep that play up for the entire game. In the first half West was able to get the ball in the hands of point guard Michael Horton and Horton was able to penetrate and find open teammates. Second half was a different story as each player looked to score themselves and didn't look to set things up with Horton. Besides doing a good job of running the offense, Horton looked to score in the second half and dropped a couple threes in the second half and led the team with 12 points. Corvonn Gaines seemed to struggle finding and room inside the arc to score but, did drop some outside shots to help in the scoring column. Deon Johnson is alot better player then I thought. After watching Johnson once he looked like a guy that just wanted to dunk and show how high he can jump but, in this game he did a nice job of knocking down the outside shots and getting inside and finishing strong. I had said that I was interested to see Michael Collins again to see if the last game was a fluke. Well West's coach decided to change the starting lineup since the last time I saw West and started two guys who didn't even see the court in the last game. Therefore Collins didn't see much floor time, so I'm just gonna say that the first game I saw was just a fluke.

High Scorers
Janesville Craig- Pregont 25 Burns 19 Goike 16
Madison West- Horton 12 Gaines 10 Johnson 9

With another one right I'm now 6-5 on predictions on the year. I DVRd the Badger game so I'll be watching that and be back tomorrow with some thoughts.