Rough stretch starts with easy win for Naperville Central
Kicking off an NBA-like stretch of six games in nine days, Naperville Central coach Pete Kramer couldn't have been more pleased with the start his squad fashioned against visiting Glenbard North on Friday night.
The Redhawks sprinted to a 22-4 lead after one quarter and then coasted to a 50-32 victory over the Panthers in the DuPage Valley Conference boys basketball opener for both teams.
"The kids came out ready to go in the first conference game," Kramer said. "They shared the ball, played aggressively, executed on offense and played real hard defensively."
The tone was set in the first 20 seconds when Naperville Central guard Manny Rugamba stole the ball at midcourt and coasted in for a layup. That set up a quarter in which five Redhawks (4-1, 1-0) scored, led by Matthew Meier's 9 points. Naperville Central made 10 of 12 shots from the field, with the two misses rebounded by Nate Dahl and Harry Hallstrom turned into putback buckets, and the Redhawks forced 8 Glenbard North (0-5, 0-1) turnovers.
"They took it to us early in the ballgame and we have to learn how to play from the opening tip and I have to do a better job of getting them ready," said Glenbard North coach Joe Larson. "Those early turnovers really hurt, and I think on three of them we just gave the ball away and you can't do that against a good team."
The Redhawks pushed the lead to 33-10 at halftime and forged their biggest advantage of the night at 35-10 when Rugamba scored early in the third quarter. From there the Naperville Central offense began to stagnate while Glenbard North began to make some headway behind center Chamar Flanigan and Mark Krzeminski. When Myles Moore scored with just more than five minutes to play, the Panthers were within 40-25 and Kramer was forced to call a timeout, during which he forcefully informed his squad that they had scored all of 7 points in the second half to that point.
"We figured out some things we could do on the floor, but it's about consistency," Larson said. "We have to learn how to play 32 minutes of basketball."
Kramer is interested in how his squad will handle at least 160 more minutes of basketball before next Saturday is over.
"I'm happy to get that first conference win and where we're at overall," he said. "It's gonna be good for the team because we're so young, we'll get experience to help us down the road. Sometimes you learn more when you play than from just practicing."