St. Charles East dominates with defense this time
St. Charles East showcased its prolific offense by averaging 95 points in the first two games of DeKalb's 87th annual Chuck Dayton Holiday Classic.
In Friday night's semifinal matchup with Glenbrook North, the top-seeded Saints featured a suffocating first half defense that limited the Spartans to just 13 points.
The Saints pushed their comfortable 25-point halftime lead to 55-21 midway through the third quarter before coasting home to a 73-52 victory.
St. Charles East (11-1) will take on host and No. 2 seed DeKalb in Saturday night's 8 p.m. championship game. The Barbs (8-1) defeated Moline 71-64 in the evening's first semifinal.
"We wanted to start strong and take their will out right away," said Saints guard Cole Gentry, who tallied a game-high 15 points. "They only scored three points in the second quarter and it wears on a team when they can't score and we're coming out scoring."
"It's been our pressure that's done it, bottom line," added St. Charles East coach Patrick Woods, as his squad's full court press forced 14 first half turnovers and kept the Spartans from running their half-court offense.
Center Jack Bronec came up big for the Saints in the second quarter, scoring 9 of his 13 points.
His transition slam dunk ignited a 11-0 Saints run that he finished off with a pair of follow-up baskets to extend the lead to 35-11 with 1:49 left in the opening half. Bronec also collected a team-high 6 rebounds.
"I just got in a groove and felt confident with my shot," Bronec said. "My teammates trusted me and I trusted them."
"The more baskets and rebounds Bronec gets, the more confidence he gets. That's been the theme all year with him," Woods said.
Jake Asquini connected on a pair of long 3-pointers as part of a 10-point performance while Jeremy Champine, James McQuillan and Jake Clodi added 6 points each in a balanced offensive attack.
"On any given night we have seven guys that could put up some big games for us, which makes it hard to stop us," Woods said.
"We're playing well together and it's fun to play right now," Gentry said.
Michael Stachnik and Jonathan Simon tallied 12 points each to pace Glenbrook North (8-4).
While the Saints were satisfied with their overall performance, they recognized they let off the gas a little bit in the second half.
"We've really dedicated ourselves to the concept of getting stops, now if we could only get them in the fourth quarter we would be really sound," Woods said. "Giving up 39 points in the second half is way too much."
"Tomorrow is basically an away game for us against DeKalb, so it's going to be a tough one," Gentry said.
"We've been playing two and a half solid quarters the past few games, but tomorrow we definitely have to play four quarters. It's going to be a good environment and we're looking forward to it."