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Willowbrook loses to Hinsdale South

Willowbrook's Alonzo Verge Jr. had 31 points against Hinsdale South, but the Hornets' Brian Kern countered with 25 points of his own to help send Hinsdale South home with a 57-50 West Suburban Gold victory on Friday night.

The Hornets (3-4, 1-1) held the lead the whole game, but Willowbrook cut the lead to 50-47 with 1:07 left to go. Hinsdale South then got out to a 53-47 lead, but a big 3-pointer by Verge brought it back to 53-50.

Not to be outdone, Kern hit some very late free throws to clinch Hinsdale South's third win of the season.

"I just thought I gotta make them," Kern said. "This is the game for us, and I made them so it made me pretty happy."

It was only the second time this season that the Warriors were held to 50 points or less.

"We didn't play Willowbrook basketball," Warriors coach Chris Perkins said. "It was played at their speed… We're usually in the lower 60s. Rebounding, we lost that 41-25, they scored 16 points off of second chance, and that being said, we still had all the opportunities at the end to win the game."

The Warriors (4-3, 1-2) hung with Hinsdale South in the first half, trailing 30-26 at halftime. In the second half Hornets turnovers helped the Warriors stay in the game, but the Hinsdale South rebounding seemed to help negate the advantage.

"The turnovers are inexperience, and it obviously helps with (Barrett) Benson in there at (6-foot-11), he's a great rebounder," said Hornets coach Brett Moore. "They kind of did everything they could to take him away, and we had to bring him out to handle pressure and they did a good job taking him away and didn't let us just pump it in to him the whole night."

Verge and Kern carried their respective teams in the second half. The Warriors had to rely on the sophomore's 17 points having only three players score in the half.

On the opposite end Kern had 14 points, and with some help from Benson's 7 points, the Hornets edged out Willowbrook 27-24 in the second half. Benson finished the game with 12 points.

"He's a guy that we ask a lot of," Moore said of Kern. "He's gotta play several different positions, and tonight he had to play point guard with Iman (Reynolds) being out of the game… . I thought he stepped up. The free throws were huge. That's something last year he would have hit the front of the rim and this year he put them in nothing but net."

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