Streamwood gets past Larkin
While Larkin's boys basketball team put an end to its January jinx Wednesday night in Woodstock, its usual January woes continued on the Royals' home court Thursday night.
You can thank the comeback of Streamwood's Bobby Post for that.
The 6-foot-7 center returned to the Sabres' starting lineup for the first time after partially tearing his left ACL against Geneva on Dec. 7 and hit for 14 points to lead Streamwood to a 61-48 Upstate Eight River Division road victory over Larkin.
After a slow start Post, who worried at first he'd reinjure his knee, scored 12 points in the second half to show no worries and what Streamwood had missed for over a month.
“Since I've been out for almost two months, I was dying to get back out there,” Post said. “I was really nervous. It was like another first game for me. But once I knocked down that shot in the corner I just felt right at home.”
“It was nice to have him back,” said Sabres' coach Tim Jones, who mentioned his team also lost 6-6 senior Josh Harris to a broken bone in his left foot, a baseball injury that nagged Harris for months.
“(Harris) will probably be back in February, but I thought it was probably the best total game the whole team played this year, as far as everyone contributing positively.”
Two other Sabres, Jerrold Ofiana (12 points) and Julius Evans (12 points), scored above double figures as Streamwood shot 58 percent from the field and established an inside game with Larkin's lack of size.
“A lack of size kind of hurts (Larkin),” Jones said. “But we were trying to establish an inside game tonight and I thought we did a decent job of getting the ball inside.”
Post saw 10 of his points come near the basket and Evans was also effective down low as Streamwood (5-12, 1-4) outrebounded Larkin 26-21 and blocked 6 shots.
After jumping out to 14-8 lead in the first quarter, Streamwood opened up a 13-point lead in the second quarter at the charity stripe and pushed that lead to 14 in the third on D.J. Mustari's 3-pointer with 2;30 remaining.
Larkin (4-13, 0-4) staged a comeback in the fourth as 2 baskets by Ian Fluhler (21 points) cut the lead to 10. But like in the second quarter when Larkin cut the deficit to 6, turnovers repeated and Post reasserted himself by scoring 8 in the quarter. Larkin shot 34 percent on 19 of 55 shots and committed 17 turnovers.
“It's surprising we got up that many shots because we turned the ball over an awful lot,” Larkin coach Deryn Carter said. “We reverted back in a lot of areas but you take two steps forward, two steps back and we just have to keep our heads up and get better (today) in practice.”
Men's basketball
Judson 91, Purdue-North Central 76: Deon Thomas had a career-high 25 points to lead Judson to a CCAC win. Landon Skinner added 17 points and Luke Labedzki had 11 points and 9 rebounds.