St. Charles North wins rematch over Lake Park
For the first nine contests of the season, the start of the second half had been the most challenging time of the game for the St. Charles North girls basketball team.
But that was not the case in their Saturday matinee against Lake Park.
The host North Stars exploded for 25 points in the third frame to put away the Lancers in a 59-43 DuKane Conference win.
"The third quarter statistically has been our worst offensive quarter all year. We come out flat from the locker room typically, so that was a point of emphasis. We liked the way we played in the first half. We wanted to make sure we built on that momentum," said North coach Mike Tomczak.
"It was mostly the girls picking each other up. You definitely have to credit our senior and junior captains for getting us ready to play in the third quarter."
The North Stars never trailed during the game but only led by four after the first quarter, 14-10 and five at the break, 26-21.
In addition to scoring almost as many points as they had in the first 16 minutes, St. Charles North (6-3, 1-1) limited the Lancers (8-2, 1-2) to only 10 points in the third quarter. The North Stars ended the period with a 51-31 lead.
"We said in the locker room, pretend that we're down by 20. We are going out there and we have to score and we have to play hard," said St. Charles North's Anna Tate, who scored 8 of her team high 22 points in the stanza. "I think the girls really took that to heart."
St. Charles North's control of the boards was part of its dominance, outrebounding Lake Park 41-18. Junior Emma Nawara earned a double-double, scoring 14 points while pulling down 13 boards.
"With Darrione (Rogers) and Emma (Thorne), we thought we could handle their bigs a little better than we did," Lake Park coach Brian Rupp said. "They were a lot faster than us today. They were getting every loose ball and they out-rebounded us big time."
Rogers led all scorers with 23 points and also netted a double-double with 11 rebounds. Teammate and fellow scoring threat Casey Darre was held to nine points, all on 3-pointers.
It was a different story Saturday than the season opener between the teams when Lake Park beat St. Charles North 55-38 at the Hoffman Estates Tournament.
"(Rogers) is as a high quality player as you are going to see play in this state. But when we played them the first time, not only did she go off, but 23 (Darre) went off, and some of their secondary scorers did," Tomczak said. "So our emphasis was do what we can to face guard Rogers because we are not going to shut her out, but we also put a lot of emphasis in our game plan to make sure we knew where 23 was the whole time because she is a heck of a shooter. We definitely ran her off the line as much as we could."