Thornton senior Morez Johnson physically dominated Benet for four quarters, scored 21 points and put on a Player of the Year caliber performance as the No. 5 Wildcats became the first road team to win in Lisle since February 2020, beating the No. 4 Redwings 64-54 in the When Sides Collide Shootout on Saturday.
Every once in a while Johnson appeared bothered by a finger on his left hand, but it didn’t stop him from making his free throws and throwing down a monster slam to close out the win.
Johnson didn’t mention his swollen, dislocated finger until asked about it after the game.
“I dislocated my finger in the Kenwood game, you see how fat it is?” Johnson pointed out. “I took the thing off it because it was bugging me.”
Johnson, a 6-9 Illinois recruit, hasn’t wasted his senior year trying to show what he can do on the perimeter. He’s spent his season battling and dominating in the post.
“I know there are certain things you have to do at certain levels to win,” Johnson said. “On this team I don’t need to be a slasher. I need to play my role and do my job.”
Thornton (18-2) led 22-20 at halftime and built a ten-point lead in the third quarter as Johnson scored ten points.
“He’s the best post player I’ve seen in a long time,” Benet coach Gene Heidkamp said. “We’ve had a chance to play against some really good ones, Jahlil Okafor in the state championship, Cliff Alexander. Some of the best post players in the last decade or so. He’s right up there at the top. You can’t guard him with one person.”
Isaiah Green led the Wildcats with 26 points.
“Part of the reason they had so many open shots on the perimeter is that we were completely focused on Johnson,” Heidkamp said. “But he’s so unselfish that he will make the right basketball play. We knew going in that we didn’t match up very well and that if they shot well from the three-point line we’d have a hard time and that’s how it turned out.”
Junior Blake Fagbemi led the Redwings (16-3) with 19 points and sophomore Gabe Sularski scored 14 points. Sularski, one of the state’s top sophomores, was of particular interest to Johnson.
“[Sularski] was putting a clinic up on somebody but he was locked up when I got on him in the third and fourth quarter,” Johnson said.
Curie and Homewood-Flossmoor have put together better seasons than Thornton at this point. But the Wildcats are currently playing as well as any team in the state.
“We are growing up,” Johnson said.
“We are starting to put it together,” Thornton coach Tai Streets said. “There’s a lot of room for improvement but I’m happy about how things are going.”
