COLLINSVILLE - Antonio Dean III, who's a junior forward for the boys basketball team at Granite City High School, is emerging as one of the leaders on a young Warriors' team that recently played four games at the 40th Collinsville Prairie Farms Holiday Classic tournament. He is showing strong leadership skills and savvy for the Warriors.
Antonio is a Stillwater Senior Living Male Athlete of the Month for the Warriors.
In Granite's only win of the tournament, a 52-47 triumph over Mundelein in the consolation quarterfinals, Dean scored 12 points, and helped the Warriors come back from numerous deficits to take the win. For the season, Dean is averaging 6.1 points and 0.9 rebounds-per-game, and also has eight assists and 13 steals as the Warriors are currently 5-10 after the tournament.
In a postgame interview that followed the win over the Mustangs, Dean felt solid about his effort and was happy to help the team out in any way he could.
"I'm feeling good," Dean said. "We started badly in the first half, then, we were picking up towards the second half. So, I'm feeling pretty good."
The Warriors kept plugging away, even when things weren't going well, and Granite eventually broke through to get a win that would do wonders for the team's confidence
"That's what it's all about," Dean said, "you've got to fight. You're not going to win doing pretty much nothing on the team. You've got to bring something to the team, whether it's defense or offense."
The Warriors were able to hold off Mundelein rallies and played hard to the final buzzer in overtime.
"You've got to play hard," Dean said. "If we don't play hard, it's going to be a blowout. We've got to get back on defense, stop off, do everything it takes to win."
The post-holiday stretch is about to begin for the entire area, and for Dean, he thinks that the Warriors, a young team who graduated nine seniors last season, and have other players with limited varsity experience, may very well be ready to turn their season around.
"We're practicing real hard," Dean said. "I feel like we're getting better day by day. I'm ready for it all, I'm ready for next January and February. I'm ready for the games."
Dean has a plan and very achievable goals for both himself and the team for the remainder of the season.
"My biggest goal is to just win," Dean said. "I'm just hoping we get more wins, but our team chemistry has to do better overall. Getting better, so that's the main focus, just coming back next week and getting better."
