St. Charles E. sweeps Geneva
The three Geneva graduates inducted into their alma mater’s Athletic Hall of Fame will remember Saturday forever. The Vikings boys basketball team hopes to learn and move on.
Winning its second straight game after dropping four in a row, St. Charles East forced 18 turnovers and got 27 points by Kendall Stephens and 12 by Luke Ludke to beat Geneva 61-47 in the Upstate Eight Conference River Division contest.
“I just think the energy was the main thing, and then I guess scoring brought that out — but getting everyone involved, different options,” said Stephens, the Purdue commit who hit his first 4 shots and was 10-of-15 on the night.
“I just think we went through this drought where we weren’t playing with energy,” he said. “So I think it was good to have a good, clean game as far as executing the game plan and coming out with intensity.”
The defensive plan remained the same as when St. Charles East (10-8, 5-3) beat Geneva 56-43 on Dec. 10. The Saints pressured consistently with the occasional three-quarters-court trap. The tact enabled all five starters — Stephens, Ludke, Charlie Fisher, Dom Adduci and Johnny Hondlik to record steals. Stephens had 3, twice stealing passes and then scoring after Geneva (11-8, 5-2) had grabbed a defensive rebound.
“We don’t want to react to them, they react to us, and that’s obviously what happened,” said Fisher, who scored 9 points. “We pressured them, we forced loose balls and turnovers, and we won because of that.”
Geneva, led by Phil Lorenz with 13 points, Brendan Leahy with 11 and Connor Chapman with 7, led 15-14 after a quarter, earning the edge on Mike Trimble’s 3 from the left elbow.
The tide turned quickly. Adduci took a charge and St. Charles East forced turnovers on four of the Vikings’ first seven second-quarter possessions. Threes by Fisher and Ludke led to a 13-2 Saints run and 27-17 lead midway through the quarter.
“We kind of had them on the ropes with foul trouble. They had seven fouls in the first six minutes of play and we just didn’t exploit that,” said Geneva coach Phil Ralston, who saw guard Ryan Willing leave with a sprained right ankle late in the third quarter.
“We started to get stagnant in our offense. We stopped moving the ball and stopped making good cuts. We forced some bad shots, that’s God’s honest truth. At the other end, they hit tough shots,” Ralston said.
St. Charles East led 34-21 at halftime, and after Katy Lindenmuth Green, Derek Swanson and Kurt Wehrmeister were welcomed into the Geneva Hall, the home team struggled to keep up. St. Charles East led by as much as 48-30 late in the third on Ludke’s layup off Stephens’ inbounds baseball pass.
Lorenz and John Swiderski helped get Geneva within 53-43 with 3 minutes 54 seconds to play, but the margin went back to 18 with two minutes to play.
“Come ready to play and we’re good,” said Saints coach Patrick Woods. “If we come out flat, not ready to play and not making the extra effort anyone can beat us. So if we’re going to pick a time to peak I guess now would be the best, so I think we’re on that upswing again and we just want to stay that way.”