Kenwood senior Aleks Alston has a beautiful jump shot. He runs the court smoothly and swiftly. He can handle the ball well, has impressive court vision and is 6-10. That’s every basketball coach’s dream.
But Alston hasn’t committed to a Division I school yet and coaches aren’t lining up to watch him this season. Most of that is because of all the changes in the college basketball world. Some of it is because Alston didn’t always live up to the expectations put on him the last four years.
He’s living up to everything now. Alston had four assists in the fourth quarter of No. 1 Kenwood’s 64-55 win against No. 24 Young in the Public League semifinals on Thursday at UIC’s Credit Union 1 Arena. Each was more impressive than the last. The final assist was thrown backward over his head to Amari Edwards in the corner for a three-pointer.
“I saw the double team coming at me and I knew he was going to be behind me ready to knock down the shot,” Alston said.
Alston finished with 13 points, seven assists, six rebounds and four blocks.
“This is a bigger court,” Alston said. “We are able to space out more and we confused the defense by moving the ball and cutting.”
Alston hasn’t just grown up on the court. He’s a senior leader for the Broncos and showed his maturity in the news conference when asked to compare this year’s team with last year’s preseason No. 1 squad that didn’t live up to the hype.
“It isn’t a better or worse situation,” Alston said. “This is a brand new team. We were able to come together quickly. Last year was just a lot of other stuff going on.”
Edwards led Kenwood (26-1) with 16 points and four assists. TJ Seals had 12 points and five rebounds. And nationally ranked sophomore Devin Cleveland added eight points.
Kenwood started strong and led throughout the game. Young (16-13) pulled within 53-51 on Marquis Clark’s basket with 3:12 left, but that was as close as it would get.
“Defense is the number one thing we’ve focused on this year,” Cleveland said. “In the past, they said Kenwood can’t guard anybody. We wanted to change the narrative. We know we can score with any team in the country.”
Clark, a talented junior, led Young with 27 points and senior Antonio Munoz added 12 points and nine rebounds. Munoz threw down a spectacular over-his-head reverse dunk in the first half off a lob from Damajay Richardson.
“The whole team had confidence coming in,” Munoz said. “We should have won this game but we just crumbled. We’ll be back for the state run.”
It will be a rematch in the city title game on Saturday. Curie, which beat Kenwood for the championship last year, took down Hyde Park 51-43 in the first semifinal on Thursday.
Brad Johnson led the No. 19 Condors (21-8) with 15 points and Kendall Holliday added 11 points off the bench.
Curie closed the game with a 6-0 run to seal the win.
CJ Thomas led Hyde Park (13-15) with 16 points. The Thunderbirds beat Crane and Lincoln Park to advance to the final four to show they will be a factor in the Class 3A state playoffs, despite a losing record against a tough schedule this season.