St. Charles North gets defensive with Elgin
St. Charles North's boys basketball team got back to defense - and winning - on Friday night.
Coming off a pair of disheartening losses to Batavia and St. Charles East, the North Stars (14-5, 6-3) tightened the screws defensively and emerged with a 47-32 Upstate Eight Conference River Division triumph over Elgin (12-11, 3-7) at Chesbrough Field House.
Limiting the Maroons to 2 of 12 shooting in the first quarter, the North Stars jumped out to a 13-4 lead that could have been bigger if not for their 7 turnovers.
Junior Cade Callaghan scored 7 of his game-high 11 points in the opening quarter for the North Stars, who tallied 11 unanswered points after Elgin tied the score at 2-2 in the game's first minute.
"We weren't worrying about offense," said North Stars coach Tom Poulin. "Everything was what we need to defensively. It paid off for us."
St. Charles North led 22-13 at halftime despite committing 15 turnovers as the Maroons shot just 20 percent from the field (5 of 24) during the first 16 minutes, including 0 for 10 from beyond the arc.
"We were very disappointed in how we defended the last two games - the second half against Batavia and the whole game against (St. Charles) East," said Poulin. "Both of those teams played well but when we watched film and we showed them games from earlier in the season, I didn't have to say anything.
"It was nothing special - no gimmicks - just regular, good, old-fashioned, hard-nosed defense."
Timothy Wolf's 3-pointer fueled a 6-0 run during the first 2 minutes of the second half as Elgin pulled within 22-19.
A few minutes later, the Maroons cut their deficit to 24-22 as Latrell Hudson split a pair of free throws.
From there, the North Stars capped the third quarter with an 8-0 run to extend their lead to 32-22. The surge included Erik Larson's 3-pointer from the corner and Brendan Dal Degan's 3-point play - part of North's 19-point effort from its reserves.
The lead swelled to as many as 18 at 44-26 midway through the final quarter before both teams emptied their benches.
"You get a little demoralized when you're playing good defense but you can't put the ball in the hole," said Elgin coach Mike Sitter, whose team shot 12 of 53 from the field (23 percent), including 3 of 22 (14 percent) on 3-point attempts.
"We just couldn't knock it down. It's a shame because we just played our best basketball of the year Tuesday at Batavia (58-44 win). We put four quarters together with a 10-man rotation and then we come out today and we couldn't find one person to play well on our home court in a conference game."
Elgin senior center Courtese Cooper had 7 points, 14 rebounds and 4 blocked shots but connected on just 2 of 15 field-goal tries.
"We were trying to keep him outside at all times," said North Stars junior Kyle King, who had 9 points, 12 rebounds and 4 steals. "He's hard to defend but he wasn't feeling it today."