Naperville North escapes against Metea Valley
For the first quarter and a half Friday night, Naperville North played like an elite boys basketball team.
And while the Huskies did knock off Metea Valley 74-68 to stay near the top of the DuPage Valley Conference standings, coach Jeff Powers would love to see that "elite play" for closer to four quarters in a game. The Huskies stormed out to a 34-14 lead 11 minutes into the contest but had to sweat some as the Mustangs closed the first half with a 12-0 run and then battled back to within three points at the start of the fourth quarter.
"I was really, like, happy at the beginning. We were looking really good," said Huskies leading scorer Mitch Lewis, who had four quick baskets as the home team led 24-12 after one quarter. "Then they started hitting some shots. They've got some great shooters and then the game was on."
The 20-point lead in the second quarter shrunk to 34-26 at halftime as Montrell Oliver and Matt Helwig each knocked down 3-pointers for Metea Valley in the first half, and when Helwig opened the second half with a 3, the Mustangs had used a 15-0 run to get right back in the game.
"We're still trying to learn to do what the elite teams do," Powers said after his Huskies improved to 15-3 overall and 8-1 in conference. "The elite teams when they get a lead they press on the gas pedal. We don't know how to do that. And yes, we're young, but we've got a lot of guys that have played together last year and this year … we've got to figure out how to keep stepping on the gas the whole game."
Metea Valley (9-13, 4-6) had four players score in double figures led by Helwig with 16 and Tristan Schlosser with 14 off the bench. When Del'Ron DelaRosa opened the fourth quarter with a layup, Metea Valley had cut the deficit to 49-46.
"We were kind of on our heels in the beginning and it kind of kept unraveling in the second quarter," Mustangs coach Bob Vozza said. "We went to some trapping and I like the aggressiveness that we had then. They started missing some shots. We started making some shots and we made it a game.
"We had some stretches in the second half where we had the ball and we had it to a one-possession game, but things just didn't work out."
The Huskies had plenty of firepower on this night, as Lewis scored 21 points in his first start of what has been an injury-slowed season. Camaron Hardy contributed a pair of 3s and 18 points and Chris Johnson muscled his way inside for 13 points and 8 rebounds.
On top of that, it was a put-back by Chris Sullivan and a 3 from Tyler Carlson that gave the Huskies some breathing room after the Mustangs had closed to within 49-46.
"It was certainly a good contribution from Mitch and from Chris Johnson down in the post," said Hardy, who had 9 points in each half and also blocked 2 shots. "It was just a matter of slowing the ball down when we needed to and setting up our offense. It was a matter of knocking down key shots and getting some stops."