St. Charles North goes inside to beat Prospect
St. Charles North girls basketball coach Sean Masoncup knows at times that interior passing doesn't get quite the credit it deserves.
But with the way senior Claire Jakaitis and the North Stars dominated Prospect inside in North's 59-36 win in the nightcap of the 33rd Annual Charger Classic at Dundee-Crown Saturday night, its post-entry passing certainly deserved its due.
Jakaitis scored 16 of her game-high 22 points, to go with 10 rebounds, off good passes near the rim as North (7-2)) came away with 17 assists as a team, while Prospect, the defending tournament champion, watched North rack up 30 points in the paint, shoot a 67.7 percent clip from the field and build a 27-point lead in the fourth.
"Sometimes it goes unnoticed," Masoncup said about the looks inside in his team's fourth-straight win. "I thought we did a great job of feeding the post from all different angles and making sure we did different things with it."
And it showed from the game's opening possession. Jakaitis took a feed from the right block and spun inside for an easy 2 and then did so again from the left block for a quick 4-0 lead.
Even when Prospect (7-7) rallied to take a 12-11 lead with 2:30 remaining in the quarter after Jakaitis scored North's first 11 points, Jakaitis helped end the quarter on a 7-0 with a buzzer-beater and an 18-12 lead.
"Everything I threw up went in," Jakaitis said. "(My teammates) make my job a lot easier by giving me those good passes and putting me in good situations in the post."
North junior Samantha Sample finished with 13 points and 5 assists, and took over right from where Jakaitis left off in the first quarter. Sample followed suit with 8 points all the paint to help North's lead climb to 11 with 4 minutes left in the second quarter.
"Once we get one or two scorers, three or four scorers, we're a tough team to stop," Masoncup added.
A 3-pointer by Kyla Helsel with 1:20 left helped give North a 33-18 at the half and that was all she wrote for Prospect, which had trouble passing let alone keeping possession and playing up-tempo.
"Anytime you have (23) turnovers as a team, you're not going to win a basketball game," said Knights coach Gabrielle Lovin, who watched a 2-game win streak snap. "We couldn't pass too well and we couldn't move the ball too well on offense. And when they went into the 2-3 we didn't take advantage of them spaced out the way they were. And that will hurt, no matter what."
What also hurt was the 25.6 percent clip from the field throughout as Brenda Kendziera led the way with 9 points while Emily Frasco added 8 points. Prospect registered just 6 points in the second quarter and 8 in the third, and just managed 2 assists on offense.
"Offensively we wanted to push our speed and get the ball up the floor and keep and spread and drive and kick," Lovin said. "But we just couldn't hang on to the ball and drive."
New Trier 55, Dundee-Crown 38: The Chargers (7-10) put up a fight against top-seeded New Trier before falling. Melissa Barker led D-C with 8 points. Allison Michalski added 7 points and Madilyn Tripp had 19 rebounds.