Boys Basketball: Bloom Takes Lessons to Heart After Win Over Rich Central

Based solely on the amount of time  coach Jasper Williams held the team in the locker room after Friday night’s game against Rich Central, you would’ve thought the Blazing Trojans had lost their first game of the season. The players exited more than 20 minutes later without the typical enthusiasm of a high school athlete ready for the weekend.

“(Coach Williams) definitely let us know that we weren’t playing like he wants us to,” Lejavius Johnson said. “We’re not playing the way we should be playing right now.”

to stay undefeated at 7-0, but the Blazing Trojans didn’t play with the same crispness of their previous six victories. They committed silly fouls, allowing Rich Central to get into the bonus early in the second quarter. Timely 3-point shooting allowed Bloom to have a 10-point lead at halftime, but Williams was still not pleased with his team’s start. Johnson sat most of the second quarter because of foul trouble and didn’t score a point in the first half.

“We came out and we played terrible. It wasn’t the type of game that we wanted to play,” Johnson said.

Rich Central cut into Bloom’s lead thanks to careless turnovers and offensive rebounding. The Olympians got within three points early in the fourth quarter, but Johnson scored four of his eight points in the fourth quarter to help Bloom secure the win.

What was coach Williams most disappointed in?

“Our effort basically, most important our effort,” Johnson said. “He wasn’t pleased at all with our effort.”

With , the Blazing Trojans are going to get everyone’s best effort. The undefeated record only puts a bigger bull’s-eye on their back. And if Bloom is going to get past the likes of Crete-Monee and advance far into the postseason, it will need to be able to put together a full 32 minutes of basketball.

“Right now we have this long week before our next game and we need to try and focus on (our effort) in practice,” Johnson said.