Wayne Hills tops Wayne Valley by Sean Farrell of The Record
WAYNE – Joey Belli couldn’t watch much more.
The point guard dominating the first half was his opposition. Chants of “You can’t stop him” rained down from the rival student section. Mark Howell of Wayne Valley had turned the Battle of Wayne into a one-man show. And the Wayne Hills defense around Belli was crumbling.
So the junior decided to pull his coach to the side to make some changes just before leaving the locker room for the third quarter.
“At halftime, coach told us that Howell had 17 points,” Belli said. “So I asked to guard him.”
The decision paid dividends for the Patriots.
They erased a three-point halftime deficit and came back to beat their crosstown rivals, 72-56, on Thursday night in a hostile road environment. Belli kept Howell to just three points in the second half as the Patriots pulled away.
“That’s what changed the game,” Wayne Hills coach Kevin Grimes said.
“I was really surprised. Not because he doesn’t have it in him. He’s an ultimate competitor. But I’ve never seen him step up to the challenge defensively like that yet. The fact that he’s doing that early on in the season as a junior is scary.”
Wayne Hills and Wayne Valley were locked in a back-and-forth battle for most of the game.
The Patriots played well early in the third quarter, with a 9-0 run that helped them take the lead. They responded to their coach’s plea for better defense. On one possession, Belli blocked a shot and then his team’s interior defenders forced a travel call to regain possession.
“Belli wanted the challenge,” Grimes said. “He realized that his shot wasn’t going for him and he wanted to do something else. That’s the sign of a great player.”
Belli scored 18 points for Wayne Hills. But it was the late offense from junior guard Justin Wills that turned the tide for the Patriots.
He scored 14 of his 16 points in the second half, and found his shooting touch with the game up for grabs.
“[Grimes] opened up the floor for me,” Wills said. “I wasn’t getting open looks in the corner like I usually do. He allowed me to handle more.”
Then Wills delivered the finishing blow with just over three minutes left in the game. He found an opening on the right side, buried a 3-pointer and held his shooting hand in the air to punctuate the win in style.
“We got back to being unselfish,” Grimes said. “If we’re going to win a lot of games this year and compete for a Passaic County title, we need to be unselfish, move the ball and defend and that’s exactly what we did in the second half. There’s no secret recipe for us.”