Mater Dei Defeats St. Paul

Greg Willig, St. Paul High School’s 6-foot 8-inch center, came into Wednesday’s Angelus League game against Mater Dei with a big reputation and big scoring average (27 points per game).

Willig, a 3-year varsity starter, spent the game in slacks and a sweater, benched for breaking a team rule, Coach Mike Dinneen said.

Still, Willig’s presence was felt throughout Mater Dei’s sloppy 72-57 victory over St. Paul in Chapman College’s Hutton Sports Center. His absence seemed to set the general groggy tone of the game--the poor shot selections, the air balls, the turnovers.

“This was very ugly basketball,” Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight said. “The kids got up to play against their best player and then he doesn’t play. This looked like a midweek game, the kids played real sloppy.”

On both sides.

Mater Dei had 23 turnovers, but St. Paul could never take advantage since it was simply shooting horribly from the field. By the end of third quarter, St. Paul had made just 12 of 44 shot attempts and Mater Dei had built a 52-31 lead.

“We just didn’t shoot well,” Dinneen said. “They (Mater Dei) played pretty good defense but we missed a lot of shots we usually make.”

St. Paul shot well enough in the first quarter to trail Mater Dei by just two, 15-13. But the Monarchs, spurred by consecutive 3-point baskets by guard Dylan Rigdon, outscored St. Paul 17-8 in the second quarter and took a 32-21 lead into halftime.

The game was over midway through the third quarter. By that time, McKnight had used 11 players. Ten Mater Dei players scored in the game, led by Mike Morris’ 17. Rigdon added 11 and Derek Stone 10.

St. Paul’s 6-7 forward John Overbeck, trying to pick up some of the slack left by Willig’s absence, scored 26 points, most on short bank shots.

“Overbeck looked like an All-American tonight,” McKnight said.

But he was a sick one. Overbeck, recovering from the flu, had a hard time keeping his breath. Guard Jason Hart, averaging 21 points a game, had only 11 Wednesday as he was hounded by Mater Dei’s Jason Quinn.

While McKnight praised Quinn’s work on Hart, he wouldn’t give credit to his defense for holding St. Paul, which came into the game averaging 87 points a game, to a 2-year low in scoring.

“I don’t think either teams’ defense played any part in this game,” McKnight said.

Though Dinneen refused to speculate how the game would have been different had Willig played (“He didn’t play so its irrelevant”) he guaranteed that Willig will play the next time the teams meet and that that game will “be a lot different than tonight’s.”