MANCHESTER • Years from now, whenever he visits his alma mater, Mark Waller can look up on the gym wall and see a part of school history he helped create.
Waller and fellow senior forward Charlie Bakula scored 20 points apiece to lead the Patriots to a 70-58 victory over Lafayette in a Senior Night game Friday that decided the Suburban West Conference championship.
"It's been a goal I've strived to achieve all four years of high school," Waller said. "To finally get it done my senior year is great because every time we come up in this gym, we're gonna have those numbers hanging up and say ‘hey, that was us; that was our team.' That's a great feeling."
South finished the regular season 20-6 and won the Sub West with a perfect 8-0 mark. The conference title is South's first since 2007-08 (when it shared it with Lafayette) and sixth in program history
"We came to play tonight and were up for the challenge," said Patriots coach Mitch Stevens, who is now 120-48 in six seasons at the school from which he graduated in 1992. "It was just kind of our night tonight. We got the loose balls and we got some breaks and the ball was dropping for us tonight."
Lafayette, which lost to Parkway South in the Ameritime Classic third-place game Jan. 27 and then won seven in a row before Friday's loss, wrapped up the regular season 17-8 overall and 7-1 in conference.
"We didn't defend as well as we would have liked," Lancers coach Scott Allen said. "We gave up a lot of open looks and they knocked them down. That got us spread out and they got the ball inside to Waller and we had a hard time with him, too. Defense and rebounding were two of our keys and we didn't do either tonight."
The tempo was fast and furious in a first quarter in which it seemed not many shots were missed by either team.
Lafayette was especially hot from the floor early on, but for every shot the Lancers hit, Bakula was answering it. He knocked down a trio of 3-pointers on his way to an 11-point first quarter to give South a 17-15 lead.
"I felt pretty good," Bakula said. "My teammates found me when I was open and I got into a rhythm once I made the first shot."
The Patriots embarked on a 10-3 run early in the second quarter to increase the lead to 29-20. The South advantage was 31-23 at halftime.
South quickly went on an 8-2 surge to assume its biggest lead of the night at 59-40. The capper for that run was provided by reserve guard Courtland Rogers, who knocked down a big 3-pointer from the right wing.
"I came up to him right after the game and said ‘Courtland, when you hit that shot, I just wanted to die,'" Waller said. "Me and Courtland are really good friends off the court, so it was awesome to see him come in and contribute like that in a big way."
Lafayette, which was led by Joel Pennington's 17 points, wouldn't go away completely with an 8-0 run in the fourth quarter to trim the lead back to 10 points, but that was as close as it could get.
Both teams could face each other again next Friday in the Class 5 District 3 championship at South, but must first get past the semifinal round Wednesday. Top-seeded South will play either Eureka or Marquette in the semis, while second-seeded Lafayette will get either Summit or Parkway West.
"Summit or West, we're gonna have our hands full, so we've got to be ready to go," Allen said. "It's a one-game season now and that's what we just got done telling our kids, so we've got to do whatever it takes to play another game."
Said Stevens: "We're gonna celebrate this for 24 hours here, but if you had to pick between (winning) conference and district, I think everybody's gonna say district, so we've got to back to work again on Monday."
