St. Charles East's speed beats Geneva's size
Score one for the little guys.
That's a relative term in boys basketball, but against a Geneva team fielding just one player shorter than 6-foot-3, host St. Charles East forced 25 turnovers to beat the Vikings 77-69 and gain an early upper hand in the Upstate Eight Conference River Division.
Senior guard Cole Gentry scored 29 points, made 12 of 14 free throws and registered 7 steals to lead four in double figures for St. Charles East (7-1, 4-0), countering an early 17-7 deficit with a full-court press and half-court man-to-man defense.
“We made some adjustments, that's for sure. We had to make adjustments,” Gentry said.
“The key was we weren't making shots in the beginning,” he said. “We were getting open looks. The same shots we made in the second half we were missing in the first half, so that was big for us to knock those shots down. Then once we started knocking them down we got a little rhythm and everything started going better.”
A game pitting the Daily Herald's Nos. 2- and 4-ranked teams, No. 2 Geneva (6-1, 2-1) charged hard off the opening tip behind 6-8 Loudon Vollbrecht, who scored 8 of his 23 points in the first quarter with two dunks.
Even then, St. Charles East foreshadowed what was to come. The Saints got steals by Evan DiLeonardi and Gentry to pull within 19-15 entering the second quarter.
“We had our home crowd with us, our home court. We knew we could beat them, we just had to keep playing our game. We knew it'd work eventually,” said DiLeonardi, who scored 10 points and rotated with Cam Miller and James McQuillan doing whatever they could to somehow contain Geneva star Nate Navigato, whose 29 points tied Gentry for game honors.
The pattern continued in the second quarter. Navigato's hot hand on an 18-foot fadeaway and a 3 near the top of the arc had Geneva up 27-19 when a Jake Asquini 3 and 4 successive Geneva turnovers ignited a 9-0 Saints run for their first lead of the game, 28-27 midway through the quarter.
Geneva led 37-34 at halftime on Navigato's high-arching 3 at the buzzer, Miller all over him.
Then came the third quarter. Geneva's Daniel Santacaterina followed a Navigato steal with a putback basket, converted a nifty Vollbrecht assist for a 41-35 Vikings lead and then St. Charles East went on a 21-0 run.
“We lost ourselves in the third quarter a little bit, stopped playing our style. That's probably what hurt us the most,” Santacaterina said of an inability to get the ball inside.
That, 6 turnovers and a Saints team effort that got scoring from Gentry, Asquini, McQuillan, Mick Vyzral and Jack Bronec, at 6-8 the Saints' lone true post player. St. Charles East led 56-43 entering the fourth quarter.
“Once we get in a rhythm we're good. We didn't get in a rhythm early on today. Our rhythm didn't come till third quarter with our defensive adjustments, I thought, that at halftime were really key,” said St. Charles East coach Patrick Woods, pleased with the Saints' second-half half-court defense.
“Obviously Loudon killed us in the first half,” Woods said. “He's a big kid with a lot of power. We just looked to help and double in the post and whatnot.”
Navigato and Vollbrecht, who added 8 rebounds, waged a two-man comeback for all of Geneva's 26 fourth-quarter points to get the Vikings twice within 9 points and to 74-66 with 36.9 seconds remaining. As Woods noted, this chasing game gave the Saints their own type of size advantage, and putting Gentry on the free throw line is a losing proposition. He made all 8 of his fourth-quarter free throws and the team made 13 of 14 as a whole.
Vyzral scored 15 points and Asquini 11 for St. Charles East, each hitting three 3-pointers.
“Give East credit, they did what they needed to do to win,” said Geneva coach Phil Ralston. “I guess the silver lining for us is it's early and we got a lot of data from this team, and hopefully we'll see growth from Geneva the next time we play.”