Conference play coming just in time
It's probably a good thing for nearly every area boys basketball team to put the Thanksgiving tournaments behind them and get started with conference play this week.
And what a start that should be with Batavia visiting St. Charles North tonight for the Bulldogs' first-ever Upstate Eight Conference game.
Batavia will waste no time getting used to playing Thursday night conference games, which later in the year will include a Geneva-Batavia game Thursday night. Maybe the NFL can get away with playing Thursday nights, but something strikes me very wrong about seeing the Bulldogs and Vikings any night besides Friday.
Whatever night it is, hopefully the start of conference play helps teams boost their level of play. Only 2-1 Kaneland starting its AD(D) era After Dave (Dudzinski) escaped Thanksgiving with a winning record by winning two games in the consolation bracket at Sycamore.
West Aurora lost a pair of games in the final minute to go 2-2 at Rock Island which was the same record Geneva and Aurora Christian posted at the Hoops for Healing tournament.
That leaves Marmion, St. Charles East, Aurora Central and the two teams playing tonight, 1-2 Batavia and 1-3 St. Charles North, all heading into conference play already chasing .500.
It's a product of several factors, from football success at some schools to facing rugged competition at others. Everyone is working new players into the mix, and that takes time for coaches to figure out their rotations and get them to click.
“We're lacking a little chemistry,” North Stars coach Tom Poulin said after the second of three losses at St. Charles East's 52nd annual Ron Johnson Thanksgiving Tournament.
“These kids haven't played in-season games together. We played summer and fall but this tournament is different.”
St. Charles North is one of two teams with a high profile transfer making a major impact. While sophomore Quinten Payne averaged 14 points and showed plenty of flashes of his Division I ability for the North Stars, Dean Danos made a splashy debut for Aurora Christian averaging 23.2 points a game at the Hoops for Healing tournament.
Aurora Christian coach Steve Hanson didn't even have the summer to work Danos in with his team. He didn't find out until late July that Danos a starter as a freshman and sophomore at Richards would be enrolling.
“He's such a big part of the offense,” Hanson said. “It's obviously a huge transition. Everything we did in the summer has kind of changed. We have two weeks and didn't have two football players until (a week before the opener). It's going to take some time to jell.
“But he does a lot of things you can't teach.”
The same could be said of East Aurora senior Ryan Boatright, and it would be a massive understatement. His 55-point, 12-rebound, 11-steal triple double in a 75-66 win over St. Charles North last Friday was the most jaw-dropping performance by any athlete in any sport I've seen in 15 years of covering high school sports.
I remember former Kane County Chronicle reporter Paul Johnson telling me he kept his stats from Batavia's 70-63 football playoff loss to Huntley in 2007 because he would never see another game like that. I'm doing the same for Boatright's game.
St. Charles East coach Brian Clodi had a more enviable seat to watch it from than his crosstown counterpart Poulin. The Saints were waiting to play the next game, and as I walked to the East Aurora locker room Clodi stopped to tell me I've never seen anything like that.
He's right, other than Michael Jordan on TV.
Clodi might be a basketball coach first but he's also a basketball fan like a thousand others who turned out Friday and watched Boatright electrify the crowd at East.
“He's that special and obviously UConn, West Virgina, Kentucky and everyone who recruited him knows that,” said Clodi, whose own future Division I player Kendall Stephens picked up a scholarship offer from Northwestern. “He put on one of the best shows I've ever seen.”
Boatright's 55 points actually are more than West Aurora (53.5), St. Charles East (51.3), Geneva (50.8) and Batavia (45.0) are averaging as a team.
If there's any good news for St. Charles North about Boatright, it's that for the first time it won't see East Aurora again in UEC play. Neither will St. Charles East with the new conference format, though Batavia does get the Tomcats in a crossover matchup.
Clodi then explained what he and his assistants used to tell his players before playing Boatright.
“My guys, we've always said if there is a million dollars in the lane and we only had to keep hm out of there for 15 seconds, five vs. one, I've always said he'll probably be the millionaire and not us just because he's that explosive and that talented,” Clodi said of the future UConn guard. “Not that my guys can't play D, it's that nobody can stay in front of him. You have to double him and hopefully their four don't beat your three.”
The 55 points broke Boatright's previous career high of 45 and it also broke the 41 I've seen in person by Geneva's Brandon D'Amico and Aurora Central's Joey Guth.
I wish I would have taken Paul Johnson's advice sooner because I'd like to see how many Westmont and Iowa guard Pierre Pierce scored against Wheaton Academy back in their late 1990s regional battles. Or in girls basketball how many former Waubonsie Valley and Penn State guard Ashley Luke poured in.
I know it was a lot by both, probably pushing the upper 40s.
But it wasn't 55. And there wasn't a triple double to go with it.
While that's going to be an impossible individual effort to follow, there's still plenty of team success to look forward to. And it starts tonight, with coaches hoping lessons learned at Thanksgiving will lead to better results in conference.
“This tournament exposes you and teaches you right away the type of focus, the type of energy and the type of togetherness you need to be successful,” Poulin said. “That's why we come here.”
jlemon@dailyherald.com