St. Charles North breaks away from Elgin

St. Charles North and Elgin played pretty evenly for about 30 minutes.

But then there was that 2-minute stretch at the beginning of the second quarter. The North Stars' Lucas Heflen drained a 3-pointer from the corner and Brendan Dal Degan hit 2 more on the North Stars' next 2 possessions.

Just like that a 7-7 tie turned into a 16-7 lead for SCN and Elgin never recovered. The Stars wound up winning by that same 9-point margin, 61-52, in Upstate Eight River boys basketball action in St. Charles Friday night.

Erik Larson made three 3-pointers and finished with 14 points and Kyle King grabbed 12 rebounds and dished out 5 assists for St. Charles North (13-7, 6-2).

That 3-point shooting helped overcome some problems in other areas. The Stars frequently looked out of sync, and Elgin's defense deserves much of the credit.

"I thought Elgin played smart, they played hard, and we didn't play real well," said SCN coach Tom Poulin. "That's about as bad as we've played all year, and that's because of Elgin getting after it defensively and attacking us on our offense. We were lethargic, we didn't communicate, we didn't fight through screens. We did enough to get a win, but it's not the level we want to be playing at."

Elgin (6-14, 0-8) fell behind 27-14 at the break by making just 4 of 17 shots. The Maroons picked it up later as Dan Toolsie got hot. He scored 19 of his game-high 21 points after intermission, allowing the Maroons to stay in the game.

"There's things you can control in life and there's things you can't," said Elgin coach Mike Sitter. "You can control your effort and I thought our effort was there for four quarters, so I'm happy about that."

The North Stars opened up a 58-43 lead with 3:34 to go, but Elgin answered with 9 straight points to make it 58-52 with 1:46 to go.

Elgin had a chance to get closer as, on back-to-back possessions, the North Stars' Zach Ludwig missed the second of 2 free throws. But both times, Cade Callaghan grabbed the rebound.

"It hurt us that we couldn't box out twice on free throws," Sitter said. "We cut it down to 6 and got them to miss free throws, and we can't rebound. So that's on us. We didn't reward ourselves for our hard work."

Ludwig added 12 points and Dal Degan, King, and Callaghan scored 8 points each for St. Charles North.

Daz Cooks chipped in 9 points and Trevon Morris 8 for Elgin, while Roy Panthier pulled down 7 rebounds.