One bad quarter dooms St. Francis

It was like two games, St. Francis boys basketball coach Erin Dwyer said.

There were the first eight minutes in which Providence leapt to a lead. St. Francis outscored the Celtics over the next three quarters but not quite enough as Providence won the Chicago Catholic League crossover 60-53 on Saturday in Wheaton.

"We started off just so poorly," Spartans guard Mike Cascella said after scoring 8 points in his first varsity start.

"In the second half we really started to pick it up," he said. "If we played like the end of the third quarter, the entire fourth quarter we easily could have won that game, I feel like. Just a poor start, never could recover from it."

St. Francis (6-11) scored on its first shot, an Andrew Harvey 3-pointer. By the time he got rolling again Providence (6-11) was on its way to making 9 of 13 shots for a 22-11 lead after one quarter, courtesy of a 20-3 run.

"We thought he would set the tone early, they'd kind of go as he went. We got good pressure on the basketball," said Providence coach Tim Trendel, who assigned senior Mike Drew against the Spartans' junior forward and got active defense by guards Jake Schutter and Matt DiNardi.

Providence didn't duplicate its early offense yet led comfortably until St. Francis unleashed a 27-point fourth quarter.

"We were hustling more, working harder on defense," said Harvey, who grabbed 8 rebounds and led all scorers with 19 points, one more than Schutter, who notched 18 points, 11 rebounds.

"We were not giving up as many easy jump shots, uncontested, and we were hustling back on defense and giving up no second-chance points for them," Harvey said.

After contributions off the bench by Nick Kosmetatos and Nate Kravchuk helped the Spartans tread water over the middle quarters, St. Francis rallied from a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit. A pair of George Hamman 3-pointers, Cascella at the foul line, Harvey both inside and out and big John Detloff cut the margin to 52-46 with one minute left.

A Detloff putback made it 58-53 with 14.2 seconds left. Schutter followed with two of the Celtics' 17 fourth-quarter free throws to end it.

"I'm always proud of our effort," Dwyer said. "We always have guys that are going to sell out for each other and get on the floor and go with the high effort. You have to execute better. You've got to play a full four quarters. You've got to do the little things, and we'll get there."