As a child, Evergreen Park’s Kyziah Lewis was transfixed whenever basketball came on TV.
She enjoyed watching Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose and Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant.
“Derrick Rose is still my top player,” Lewis said. “I like the way he played. I try to drive like he did, and I like to try to get there. I have a bigger size than him from my standpoint, but I try to maneuver and be as smooth as I can be.”
The senior forward did some driving — some of it smooth, some of it strong — Thursday night to help host Evergreen Park knock off Shepard in a 55-45 South Suburban Red victory.
Lewis tallied 18 points, 10 rebounds and two blocked shots for Evergreen Park (20-10, 9-4). One of those blocks came at the halftime buzzer that ended up energizing the Mustangs.
Trinity Jones added 17 points, seven rebounds and four steals. Grace Kole had nine rebounds.
Jessica Manley led Shepard (16-9, 10-3) with 22 points, which included scoring all 11 points for the Astros in the first quarter. Mia Stokes finished with 10 points.
Despite the loss, Shepard shared the conference title with Oak Lawn for a second straight season. Before last winter, the Astros had never won a conference titles. It’s the Spartans’ fifth in a row.
For Lewis, though, watching Rose and Bryant in the early days caught her parents’ attention.
“They saw I was very interested in it,” Lewis said of basketball. “They let me play when I was 3, and I just kept going from there.”
George Shimko, a veteran coach who’s in his first season at Evergreen Park, joked about wishing that Lewis could come back for an extra year of eligibility due to the pandemic.
“Kyziah Lewis is very skilled,” Shimko said. “She can shoot the medium-range jump shot and hit the three. She posts up really well. She passes well, and she’s a really good defender.
“She’s been a joy to coach.”
Jones, who said she has been teammates with Lewis from when they played together at Central Middle School in Evergreen Park, has enjoyed that experience.
“Our chemistry is just insane,” Jones said. “She has developed so much throughout the years and I’m so happy for her. She’s a great player and a great teammate.”
Evergreen Park actually opened the regular season on Nov. 18 with a 60-45 loss to Shepard in the first round of the Bobby Bolton Classic, but the Mustangs were missing some players.
After some ups and downs, Evergreen Park has gone 14-2 in its last 16 games. Both losses were close shaves, 51-47 to T.F. South and 45-42 to Oak Lawn.
“We were 90 seconds away from beating T.F. South and we were one possession away from beating Oak Lawn,” Shimko said. “From where we were in the conference to where we are now, we’re happy with the progress.”
Evergreen Park, which drew the third seed in the Class 3A St. Laurence Sectional, plays against 14th-seeded Chicago Vocational at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Simeon Regional.
“We need to keep the chemistry up and make sure we feed off of each other,” Lewis said.
“We’ve come so far,” Jones said. “We’ve had close losses early in the year, but some of them were good losses. Lately, we’ve been working hard as a team and everything has been good.”
The 5-foot-10 Lewis is getting college interest from Truman, Morton and Prairie State. She’s not sure where her basketball career will take her, but she knows she wants to keep playing.
“I can never leave basketball – it’s in my DNA,” Lewis said. “There is nothing like it.
“Everything about it makes me excited and I could never step away from it.”
Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
