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Lake Park takes conference crown

Heading into Friday night allowing only 39.9 points a game in DuPage Valley Conference boys basketball play and needing a win on the road against Naperville Central to clinch a share of the league title, Lake Park had a pretty good idea it would get what it needed defensively.

However, in a game played in the 40s, it was the Lancers' ability to hit timely shots and knock down free throws on an otherwise off-night offensively that gave Lake Park the edge it needed in a 46-43 win.

With news of Naperville North's 47-44 win over Wheaton North on Friday night, Lake Park clinched the outright DVC crown.

After leading by as many as 9 points with less than three minutes to play in the third period, Naperville Central managed to tie the ballgame at 30, 32 and 34 in what wound up being a tightly contested possession-by-possession battle. Yet, Lake Park managed to answer every Redhawks run in preserving the victory.

"Shooting makes your offense look great," Lake Park coach Josh Virostko said. "We were not executing well offensively, and one reason why was because all we worked on was zone, and I give (Naperville Central) credit because they went man-to-man early."

Lake Park guard Danny Hynes came off the bench and hit a couple of first-half 3-pointers, but his biggest shot of the night came with less than five minutes to play in the fourth quarter. With the game tied at 34, Hines launched a contested 3-pointer that found the bottom of the net and gave Lake Park a lead it would never relinquish.

Naperville Central would manage to get to within two or less on four more occasions down the stretch, but the Lancers hit all five of their fourth-quarter free throws to put it away.

Cameron Van Aswegen led all scorers in the game with 14 points for Lake Park. Naperville Central's Matt Meier, a junior, led his team with 13 points on Senior Night for the Redhawks.

"We've been talking about it all week. Those three seniors (Mark Nowak, Nate Dahl and Alex Pomeroy) are the heart and soul of this team," Meier said. "They're our leaders and it would have been great to come up with the win for them, but we came up short."

"We knew coming in (to the season) that we had some depth and we knew if they stuck together they could do some good things," Virostko said.

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