Naperville North muscles out win against Hinsdale Central

Good ball movement and sharp shooting kept Hinsdale Central in Monday's boys basketball season opener with Naperville North for much of the contest, but in the end the Huskies were just too tough inside.

With a size advantage on the Red Devils, it was no surprise to see Naperville North feed to ball down low to 6-foot-7 center Chris Johnson, who muscled his way to 14 points and 6 rebounds in the Hoops for Healing Tournament game. But 6-foot-6 guard Mitch Lewis worked his way inside for several strong baskets, and his 17 points led the way in the 69-54 defeat of Hinsdale Central.

"That was kind of the game plan to get it into Chris Johnson and now that we have the sophomore, Tom Welch, we can go in to him too," said Lewis, who tallied 11 points in the third quarter.

"That was kind of the game plan. We knew we were bigger and we wanted to use our height to try and win."

With senior guard Chris Eck knocking down four 3-pointers and scoring a game-high 23 points, the smaller Red Devils battled throughout and closed to within 50-45 early in the fourth quarter.

But that's when Welch connected on three straight buckets inside, twice taking nice feeds from Lewis and once finishing off a pass from Johnson. The 6-foot-5 sophomore scored 9 of his 11 points off the bench in the fourth quarter as the hosts pulled out the win.

"I thought we fought hard. We just couldn't get back close enough," said Eck, who made 9 of 10 free throws for Hinsdale Central. "We couldn't get enough stops to get the lead down. We kept going back to back, we just couldn't stop their bigs. They were pounding us down in the paint."

The Huskies returned pretty much all of their size and scoring from last season and now added some new parts, including Welch. They created too many matchup problems for the Red Devils, but coach Nick Latorre expects his team to improve on its defense and toughness.

"We hung around. I thought our defensive toughness could have been a little better," he said. "But their big kids gave us fits, absolutely. Defensive toughness … it's early and we still have to kind of find our identity, but we have to guard better."

Hinsdale Central jumped ahead 11-6 behind 3s from Eck and Tomas Misiunas, but the Huskies went on a 21-2 run to take a 27-13 lead midway through the second quarter. Tabo Tarun and Youcef Merabet each hit 3s for Naperville North during the run, which was capped off by a layup from Scott Smith. Ten Huskies scored in the first half.

"They're good. They're really good," Latorre said of the Huskies.

"They've got a lot of nice parts. Their bigs are big and pretty versatile."