Dundee-Crown goes cold in season-opening setback

Dundee-Charger coach Lance Huber took a glass half full view after his team dropped its season opener 55-35 to Sterling at the Leland G. Strobom Tournament in Sycamore Tuesday night.

"There's not much room but to go up after this one. I thought we did a lot of good things. We have some guys in new rolls," Huber said. "Everybody got a taste of varsity basketball. We'll go from there and get the wrinkles worked out."

The Chargers, who won the tournament last year, scored the first five points of the game and led 12-8 after the first quarter.

Sterling (1-0) took over in the second period, outscoring D-C 14-5 to lead 22-17 at halftime.

The Golden Warriors' pressure man-to-man defense prevented D-C from working the ball inside and the Chargers were unable to connect from beyond the arc.

"Defense is where it starts and those are habits we are trying to build right now," said Sterling coach Ryan Vasquez.

D-C (0-1) went five minutes during the quarter without scoring a point. Douglas Miller (6 points) ended the drought by sinking two free throws with less than three minutes left in the first half.

"We had a hard time doing some things. (Justin) Prusko is a big kid and we like to give him the ball and also to Ryan Hodor but we didn't do a very good job of that. That's something we can work on," said Huber. "Sterling was a little stronger than us and they really outmuscled us."

Sterling's dominance continued in the third quarter. Sterling's Trevor Vos scored eight of his game-high 14 points in the frame that ended with the Golden Warriors leading 40-26.

"I was disappointed in our effort in the second half," the Chargers coach said. "We weren't getting up and down the floor and finding guys in transition."

"I'm really proud of our seniors, taking over in the third quarter - the intensity that we played with," Vasquez said. "If we are capable of doing that for 32 minutes we could be a dangerous team."

Vasquez also saw areas where his team could improve.

"Any offense that you run where the ball goes in looks a heck of lot better," said Vasquez. "We missed some easy shots, we took some bad shots, we had some turnovers that hurt us, we missed some free throws but that is all first game stuff."

Kyle Huber led D-C scorers with 9 points.