After Walt Whitman High School's summer and fall league boys basketball teams bickered and bumbled their way to just a 1-19 combined record, Chris Lun may have wondered if his 100th varsity coaching win would come before the New Year.

After Friday night's performance settled that worry, he'll instead turn to figuring out just how big a force Jemal Cheatham can be.

Cheatham scored 21 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and swatted five blocks in what Lun called the most dominant showing by a Whitman big man during his eight seasons and 100 wins, helping the Vikings pull away to a 66-49 victory over Wheaton, giving Lun the benchmark in their home opener.

“He was fantastic,” Lun said of Cheatham, who perhaps so overshadowed the coach that Lun was left to carry his own congratulatory posters and keepsakes into the locker room by himself. “It's something he really wants to do, and he's worked his butt off. He's in phenomenal shape. I don't know what clicked for him, but he was just attacking the glass. … He was all over the place.”

Lloyd Ferguson scored 25 points and hit five 3-pointers for Wheaton (0-2), and Yonas Million added 10 points on three 3s and a foul shot. The Knights failed to penetrate Whitman's 2-3 zone to any serious degree.

“We're not playing complete games,” said Wheaton coach Sharif Hashim.

“We were up two against Richard Montgomery at the half (Tuesday), tonight we were down one, and we're just not playing a complete game.”

For Whitman (1-1), Jake Harrison added 15 points including three 3-pointers, but Cheatham's inside game was the story.

It hadn't always been the case for Cheatham, who only played the first portion of last season before deciding his mind or heart wasn't in it.

Without him for the second half of last year's campaign, the Vikings (1-1) finished just 8-16 and carried that negative momentum into the following summer and fall.

But already, Cheatham insists that's old history, and his play backed up that sentiment. He swatted two of his five blocks during the opening moments of the second half, setting the tone for a third quarter where Wheaton scored only four points, and he followed that by scoring eight straight points for the Vikings early in the fourth as part of a 10-2 run that made it 52-35.

“My effort comes from, it's what I want,” Cheatham said. “I want to win this game. The whole team wants to win this game. We come out motivated, we come out enthused, and we pulled out the win.”

Later in the fourth, Andrew Castagnetti hit a pair of transition layups on Harrison's feeds to stretch it to 58-42, before Castagnetti and Harrison hit back-to-back 3s to push the lead all the way to 64-43.

The final buzzer came a few minutes after, followed by a loose on-court celebration for Lun, complete with motivational posters and smaller sky blue signs emblazoned with “100” in black print, held up throughout the home half of the gym.

But it was hard to argue that it was anything other than Cheatham's night.

“We've come from losing every game, being at each other's throats, bickering about everything, arguing, to the display you just saw,” Cheatham said. “Knowing that my team is behind me, I feel comfortable.”

Whitman 66, Wheaton 49

Wheaton (0-2) 13 16 4 16—49

Whitman (1-1) 14 16 12 24—66

Wheaton—Ferguson 8 4-5 25; Metellus 1 0-0 2; Payne 0 5-6 5; Hawkins 1 0-1 2; Warren 0 1-1 1; Kallon 2 0-0 4; Million 3 1-2 10.

Whitman—Harrison 4 2-4 15; Lee 2 0-0 5; Case 1 0-2 2; Castagnetti 4 0-0 9; Steinhorn 2 1-4 5; Cheatham 9 3-3 21; Lowet 2 3-3 7; Yockey 0 2-2 2.