Naperville Central plays a winning tune

Gabi Melby and her Naperville Central teammates had a lot to celebrate on Saturday.

The Redhawks started all five seniors, including injured star Lucy Schmid, for their Senior Day game against Metea Valley.

The University of Chicago-bound Schmid, out for the season with a torn ACL, received the opening tip before being replaced by Melby, a sophomore who scored a game-high 20 points to lead the Redhawks to a 42-28 victory.

The win was the sixth in the past eight games for Naperville Central (12-16, 4-1), which stayed one game behind Naperville North in the DuPage Valley Conference race with three games remaining. The Redhawks will host the Huskies on Friday night.

But the most memorable part of the day, according to Melby, was hearing Naperville Central coach Andy Nussbaum belt out a superb rendition of the national anthem.

"Personally, for me that was my favorite part of the whole day," Melby said. "It was awesome. He did a great job."

Nussbaum also sang the anthem at last year's Senior Day festivities, and the Redhawks asked him to do so again this year.

"I totally forgot," Nussbaum said. "As we lined up they're like, 'Hey, you're supposed to sing.'

"I said I'm not ready to do it."

But when the recorded anthem wouldn't play, Nussbaum was forced to step up. His players followed suit when the game began.

"It was different," Naperville Central junior Emily Spisak said. "It got us hyped up, put a smile on our faces and got us ready for the game."

Metea Valley (9-14, 1-4) scored the first 6 points before Nussbaum put his usual starters in. Senior Tess Thompson, who had 11 points and 11 rebounds, gave the Mustangs a 10-8 lead with two free throws early in the second quarter.

But Melby sank the second of her six 3-pointers to put the Redhawks ahead to stay. She drilled 3 more in the third quarter to give her team a 31-18 lead.

The Redhawks made nine 3-pointers. Spisak, who tallied 8 points, made two 3 and sophomore Karly Maida had 1.

"It's a fun day for our seniors and we just had so much energy," Melby said. "'Nuss' was like we've got to go out there and do our job and that's what we did.

"I thought we executed very well. We practiced this whole week against zones and I thought we did a good job."

Metea held the Redhawks scoreless for the final four minutes of the second quarter to stay within 16-13 at halftime. But Naperville Central made adjustments at both ends of the floor that proved decisive.

The Redhawks finished with 11 assists, with Melby getting 5, Spisak 3 and Kate Gilfillan 2.

"During halftime we were talking about moving the ball faster because in the first half we weren't getting as many looks as we normally do," Spisak said. "So just moving the ball faster really helped get openings and helped us to find each other.

"We're just really good at finding who's hot for the night, and when we do that we get some scores."

Conversely, the Mustangs weren't able to do that. Chloe Kurkjian's baseline jumper cut the gap to 31-25 with 6:13 left but they went six minutes without a basket, a span in which Thompson did not get a shot off.

"They knew what Tess brought to the table so they made a couple of adjustments," Metea coach Cedric Williams said. "I thought we were holding the ball too long and could have given it to her earlier and then the defense shifted on us and they kind of covered it up.

"We tried to make some adjustments, but we just couldn't execute."