Waukegan’s Carter Newsome had only a split-second to react.
In fact, there was 0.9 of a second on the clock when the ball was inbounded to the 5-foot-10 junior guard near the basket.
“I was thinking, ‘This has to go up immediately,’” he said.
After Newsome cut through the lane, he took the pass from senior guard Devaughn Brown and put up a shot that set off a celebration on his home court in the Class 4A Waukegan Sectional semifinals on Wednesday night. His basket as time expired gave the top-seeded Bulldogs a 59-57 win over second-seeded Rockford Guilford.
Senior guard Xavi Granville scored a team-high 24 points for Waukegan (24-7), which will play second-seeded Warren (24-10) in the sectional championship game at 7 p.m. Friday. Granville, a Grayslake Central transfer, actually was supposed to take the final shot. The Bulldogs had called two timeouts to set it up with 2.2 seconds left. But a tipped entry pass by Guilford (27-6) took more than a second off the clock and forced a bit of improvisation by Newsome.
“Initially, the call was for X because you saw what he did tonight,” Newsome said. “But I saw an opportunity and took it. I’ve got to credit the pass from DJ Brown because that inbounds pass is tough to do.”
Newsome, a point guard first and foremost, finished with four points on 2-of-13 shooting and five steals.
“I just knew one of them had to fall,” he said. “We have a lot of big scorers, and teams a lot of times game-plan for them. That leaves me the opportunities to take my chances, which everyone knows I can usually make.”
Indeed, Newsome has made more shots this season than he had in the past, and that’s a growing part of the second-year starter‘s game.
“He’s our biggest gym rat,” Waukegan coach Ron Ashlaw said. “He stays after practice, and he works off that (shooting) gun, so he gets great trajectory on his shot. He’s crafty and has a good internal clock, a good sense of the time he has available to him. He’s about as underrated of a point guard as there is in Illinois right now.”
Newsome’s teammates know he will always do what’s best for the Bulldogs.
“Carter’s game can be silent sometimes, but he really executes when we need him to,” Granville said. “He’s like our coach on the floor. Everybody respects him. Everybody values what he has to say. Practice could be the silliest it’s ever been, but as soon as Carter says something, we all pay attention and lock in on what he’s got to say.”
Newsome is part of a Waukegan basketball family. His older brother Carson played for the Bulldogs’ 2017 sectional finalist. His father Ronzeyl, who also played for Waukegan, is a longtime AAU and feeder coach in the city and is in his first season as an assistant on Ashlaw’s staff.
“This is a special group to me because a lot of these guys — like Simereon (Carter), Adrian (Serrano), Trey (Trey’Veon Roberts) — I grew up with them since third grade,” Ronzeyl Newsome said. “For them to seize the opportunity to play at Waukegan and to play in this environment is special.”
For Carter Newsome, having his father on the bench presents a new challenge.
“He definitely gets on me about the little things, and it can agitate me,” Carter Newsome said. “That’s both on and off the court. But he’s making sure that I’m that leader that’s needed.”
One more win is all Carter Newsome needs to win bragging rights in the family.
“This is his chance to go further than his brother, so hopefully his team does it,” Ronzeyl Newsome said. “Growing up, we called him ‘Coach Carter’ because he was always drawing up plays. He’s always been a leader, and he’s asserted himself this year and put in the work.”
Steve Reaven is a freelance reporter.
