Depew High School's Crawley takes advantage of the moment

DEPEW - On a team with talented players up and down the roster, senior Justin Crawley is just ready to make sure he’s ready when the Depew High School boys basketball team needs him to come up with some big plays. In a big ECIC-III game against East Aurora recently, Crawley took advantage of his moments.

The senior guard scored 10 points in the fourth quarter to help the Wildcats erase a 13-point second half deficit for a huge league win.

“It’s always nice to see seniors step up in leadership roles and be able to do it for us,” Depew coach Larry Jones said.

The deep Wildcats know they can count on anyone on the roster on any given night. When East Aurora took a 38-25 lead midway through the fourth-quarter in a late-December showdown, it was Crawley’s turn. His 3-point basket ended a scoring drought for the Wildcats, cut the gap to 10 and seem to push the momentum back to the Depew side.

“It took a little while, but yeah I was happy to make some shots for my team,” he said. “Whoever scores, it doesn’t matter as long as we score.”

That team-first attitude is evident up and down the roster. As the Wildcats compete in the always tough ECIC-III, they’re going to rely on everyone to be ready to go when their number is called.

“We have the whole team can score,” Crawley said. “We have a deep team everyone can play well, so we don’t worry about who get the points.”

Crawley was a part of last year’s team that reached the Class B-1 Section VI championship game. But this year, he’s one of a number of seniors looking at a much bigger role.

“We’re growing up,” Jones said. “Our seniors have had playing time in past years but not a lot. They’re growing with the moment.”

The Wildcats held a 4-2 record on Christmas that included a 2-1 record in the league. Depew’s two losses came by a combined four points. But the Wildcats won the final three league games in the 2012 portion of the schedule and will look to keep that strong going in 2013.

“Hopefully we can keep this going,” Jones said. “We still have a little work to do.”

And a lot of that comes back to getting strong play on both ends of the court from everyone on the roster.

“Hopefully we can keep up the strong team play,” Crawley said. “We want to get everybody involved and have everybody do what they need to do every game.”