Naperville North gets past West Aurora

Naperville North coach Jacquie Discipio had to admit she was a little worried after watching the first half of her team's game Thursday night against West Aurora.

She felt a whole lot better about the second half of the Huskies' 61-54 DuPage Valley Conference victory in Naperville.

The big difference was the way the Huskies (3-5, 2-1) responded to the Blackhawks' challenge in the fourth quarter.

“That's new for us,” Discipio said. “That's something I haven't seen in a while.”

West Aurora coach Connie Siljendahl also saw good things from her team, which was missing three starters.

“I thought we did some nice things today,” Siljendahl said. “It didn't go our way, but the girls played together more today. I would've liked to push the ball a little bit more and played better defense.”

West Aurora (0-8, 0-2) took a 32-31 lead into halftime when Royalle Brown scored at the buzzer. But the Huskies started the third quarter on a 12-2 run.

“Everything finally went into sync,” Discipio said. “We finally got some better passing, Zoe added some fluidity and some speed to our offense, so everything shifted in the third quarter.”

The Huskies took their biggest lead of the game at 54-46 with 3:40 left in the game when senior Bella Masini took a pass from Jenna Jatczak on the right block, turned and scored.

West Aurora picked up its first field goal of the fourth with 2:04 to play when Dazmine Chaney scored a lay-in. She scored the Blackhawks' final 8 points, finishing with a team-high 17, but West Aurora got no closer than 3 points again.

“This is probably one of our best games this year,” Siljendahl said. “We've just been struggling.”

Junior Alexis Nelson added 16 points for the Blackhawks, 10 of them in the first quarter before Naperville North switched to a box-and-one defense on her.

“She's been working hard,” Siljendahl said. “She had a great practice this week and she's been really working on her outside game, but she's got a bad ankle.”

Senior Royalle Brown scored 13 for West Aurora and was a force on the boards, grabbing 15 rebounds.

Jatczak scored a game-high 18 points to go with 5 assists, and Shannon Bushman added 17 points and 5 rebounds.

“Jenna and Shannon I feel like are surely our foundation,” Discipio said. “... They did a really good job of leading our team tonight.”