Heights boys bounce past Kapaun

There wasn’t much question as to what Heights coach Joe Auer built his team around last year. The Falcons’ guards were great, and they followed them all the way to a Class 5A championship.

This year, Heights is a different monster. And it’ll take a team with a monster frontcourt to beat them — the first evidence being a 54-38 win at Kapaun Mount Carmel in Friday’s season opener in which the Falcons played suffocating defense and hit the glass like a team in midseason form.

“The things we did well tonight, I expected us to do well,” Auer said. “I think we had 40 rebounds, we caused a lot of turnovers and had a lot of deflections, so that better be our calling card.”

Heights had a pair of experience forwards answer the call against Kapaun, led by 16 points and 13 rebounds from 6-foot-3 senior Aaron Williams and 10 points and seven rebounds from 6-6 senior Davon Gill — both key components on last year’s state title run.

“You don’t have a lot of time to prepare for the first game, so you know it’ll be a little sloppy,” said Gill, who also had seven turnovers. “But we played good defense, so that made up for everything.”

Heights looked sloppy in the first quarter, turning the ball over eight times, but ended the quarter on a high note when Gill got the ball at the free-throw line, beat a defender off the dribble and finished at the rim with a thunderous, one-handed slam.

“Feels good ... first-game dunk so I’m back, you know?” Gill said.

Heights (1-0, 1-0 City League) got the separation it needed in the second quarter, outscoring Kapaun 19-6 and holding the Crusaders without a basket for four minutes. Kapaun was playing with almost an entirely new lineup.

“Everything is a teachable moment,” Kapaun coach John Cherne said. “We need to learn and we need to make adjustments. I think some of Heights’ length and pressure got to us and we didn’t adjust very well in the first half.”

Williams also had three blocks, all in the first half.

“At my position, the biggest thing is to rebound … that’s the biggest thing for me, every time out,” Williams said. “Do that, and everything else just falls into place. If I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, that’s going to making us do what we’re supposed to do as a team.”

With a 30-13 lead at halftime, Heights never let Kapaun get within single digits in the second half. JT Bell came off the bench to lead Kapaun (0-1, 0-1) with 13 points.

“They were very confident and they played that way all night,” Auer said. “We were able to limit (Kapaun) to one shot most of the night and that led to some nice scoring opportunities.”

This story was originally published December 5, 2015 at 7:58 AM with the headline "Heights boys bounce past Kapaun."