Falcons remain atop DVC

The Wheaton North girls basketball team exhibited more rust than a car in a junkyard.

Playing its first game in a week, the DuPage Valley Conference leader missed 14 of 15 shots from the field and all 4 of its free throws in a painful first quarter Saturday at Glenbard East.

Luckily for the Falcons, things got better from there. They steadily regained their shooting touch and played good enough defense to post a 43-28 victory in Lombard.

"That first half was ugly, that's for sure," Wheaton North coach David Eaton said. "I think we were just working the rust off. We had a lot of days off there without any games, and you could tell that first quarter."

Eaton's club didn't start feeling good about itself until Allie Cerone canned a 3-pointer at the buzzer of the first half. That tied the game at 14 and gave the Falcons (11-4, 5-0) a lift into the locker room.

"That was huge right there," Eaton said. "I just thought that really got the momentum going into halftime. You could see it in their eyes. They were confident they were going to get it done.

"Our shots early in the game just wouldn't fall. I laughed and joked with them at halftime just saying the law of averages is on our side."

Working for better shots, the Falcons put together a 15-2 run in the third quarter to take a 29-18 advantage. The visitors put away the game by scoring the first 10 points of the fourth quarter to move ahead 39-22.

Wheaton North overcame its first-quarter struggles and shot 16 of 30 from the field the rest of the way, including 12 of 19 in the second half.

"Our shots weren't really falling so we kind of just has to push through that," said Falcons senior forward Michelle Scandora, who had team highs of 12 points and 8 rebounds. "It was a weird first half."

Glenbard East (7-8, 1-3) led by as much as 4 in the first half but couldn't take more advantage of Wheaton North's struggles because it experienced troubles of its own. The Rams committed 13 of their 25 turnovers in the first half and shot 23 percent from the field for the game.

"We just did not take very good shots in the second half, and did not get a lot of shots off," said Glenbard East coach Nicole Miller, whose team hasn't played a game in two weeks. "We kind of struggled."

Olivia Trefilek led the Rams in scoring with 10.