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In the second quarter against Wheeling Tuesday night, Deerfield pushed the ball up the court with gusto on nearly every possession.

The points quickly followed, and Wheeling never caught up as the Warriors ran away with a 68-49 win.

“We just wanted to stay aggressive after the (Glenbrook North) loss, and in that quarter we just all came together and broke the game open,” senior guard Eric Porter said. “We didn’t want them to stay close to us; we really played to our potential.”

Porter had a game-high 19 points, nine of which came in that momentous second stanza when Deerfield quite literally blew past the sluggish Wildcats to take a 38-18 lead into the half.

Wheeling, led by the sharpshooting of junior guard Jeremy Stephani (team-best 14 points), managed to cut the deficit to 10 points in the third quarter and only trailed 54-43 with just less than seven minutes to play in the fourth. That’s as close as Wheeling would get, however, as the blistering pace set by the Warriors in that breakneck second period proved impossible to overcome.

“Defensively in the first half, I thought that was one of the best defensive halves we’ve had,” Deerfield coach Dan McKendrick said. “We were helping, we were rotating, we were scrambling. And then when we got the opportunity, we were running, which is kind of the game we need to play.”

The victory pushed Deerfield to 4-4 on the season.