'Sky's the limit' for Appleton West this season

DE PERE - If the finish of Tuesday night’s Appleton West-De Pere boys basketball game is any sign, then look out for West this season.

Consecutive dunks by Matt Reader and Jake Verhagen put an exclamation point on an impressive road win for the Terrors, who beat the Redbirds, 64-48.

Both teams are expected to make deep runs in the postseason this year as De Pere is ranked No. 3 in the Wisconsin Basketball Yearbook’s preseason rankings while West is No. 8. However, beating De Pere the way it did and on the Redbirds’ homecourt, a place they didn’t lose last season, was a message.

“It was very exciting,” Reader said. “We worked well as a team, took care of the ball for the most part. Everything just kind of clicked to start the season.

“I was really nervous. We didn’t know much about De Pere, we didn’t watch any film; just came into it. We knew they had a lot of good players like (Adam) Beyer and (Brevin) Pritzl.”

Leading 23-20 at half, West opened a double-digit lead in the third quarter before De Pere closed the gap to 40-36. In this setting against De Pere, most teams would wilt but the Terrors took on the huge home crowd and the Redbirds and scored nine straight points to reassume control.

That was something West likely wouldn’t have done a year ago.

“Last year (closing games) was one of our problems,” Reader said. “We couldn’t finish the game and that’s why we lost a lot of games. It was nice to get that finish to start the season.”

West’s win isn’t good news for its Fox Valley Association opponents. The Terrors are favored to win the FVA and Tuesday’s game only highlights how good they can be.

“Our team has a lot of high expectations,” Reader said. “We want to get to state. Our main goal is to win the FVA, because we failed to do that last year.”

West (10-8 in the FVA last year) can’t rest on Tuesday’s win long as Saturday it stays on the road and travels to Bay Port, which will challenge De Pere in the FRCC. This is the type of schedule coach Brennan Hussey wants before tipping off the FVA season.

“It’s a mindset we try to instill in our kids,” Hussey said. “We don’t schedule games to get an easy win. We schedule so that we can be our very best come the end of the season. The kids know coming into the program we’re going to schedule the best teams we can find and obviously De Pere is one of those teams.”

West left no doubt it’s one of those teams also. The Terrors were led Tuesday by Reader’s 24 points, while Eastern Illinois recruit Jake Verhagen added 18.

Reader called Tuesday’s win a confidence builder. For a team with high expectations, that could mean something special will happen at West this season.

In fact, Reader has the answer as to how far the Terrors can go.

Said Reader: “Sky’s the limit.”

Follow Doug Ritchay on Twitter @dougritchay

doug.ritchay@wluk.com