St. Charles North 66, Lake Park 50

There are quality wins, and there are impressive wins.

St. Charles North's girls basketball team accomplished both during its 66-50 home triumph over Upstate Eight Conference foe Lake Park on Saturday afternoon.

Not only did the North Stars (19-4) rely on a total team effort to gradually pull away from the Lancers (16-7, 6-2), they improved their conference record to 9-0 and helped set up a late-season showdown with co-leader Waubonsie Valley on Friday night in Aurora.

"This (win) puts us in a good position for Friday night," said North Stars coach Katie Sauber. "We have a lot of work to do obviously. Waubonsie is pretty solid, but it puts us in a nice spot."

Jumping out to a 15-4 start after the first six minutes left the North Stars in a nice spot against the Lancers.

Junior center Kelsey Smith, who led the North Stars with 27 points and 11 rebounds, scored 7 of her 9 first-quarter points during her team's early surge.

With guards Kiley Hackbarth, Anna Conrad and Nika Sircher looking to push the ball downcourt, the North Stars got quality looks at the basket.

"That's something we want to use to our advantage whenever we can," said Smith, who finished 11 of 20 from the field. "We work on our transition game pretty much every day."

The North Stars also came up with an interesting strategy while trying to defend Lake Park junior forward Samantha Arnold.

Despite giving up 10 inches to the 6-4 Arnold, Sircher took on the defensive assignment against the Lancers' leading scorer.

"We tried Kelsey on her last year (in a loss) and I didn't want to pull Kelsey away from the basket too much because of her rebounding," Sauber said. "We knew we were going to play extremely tight on Sam and that she was going to work really hard to get her points.

"And we knew if Nika was on her (Arnold) was going to try and post her up -- which was fine with us because when she turned to the middle, Kelsey was going to be there."

While Arnold poured in a game-high 29 points, 15 of those points in the fourth quarter after the North Stars had already built a 48-35 cushion.

"There was a huge height difference, but I was excited to play," Sircher said of the challenge. "I told coach Sauber before our game with Naperville North (Tuesday), 'I want to play her and I promise you I'll do the best that I can.'

"My nose is probably broken (from an inadvertent elbow) but that's OK."

St. Charles North, which led 32-23 at halftime, saw its lead trimmed to 7 late in the third quarter before junior Alex Messacar came off the bench to nail back-to-back 3-pointers in the final 53 seconds of the period.

"Those two 3s came at the best time -- nice job on her part," Sauber said. "Alex knows her job is to shoot and she did a good job of that tonight."

Sarah Drozdowski scored all 13 of her points in the first half for the Lancers.

"Today was St. Charles' day," said Lancers coach Lisa Smith. "I thought every player on their team had an impact, and unfortunately, not every player on our team had an impact.

"When you looked at the end of the first half, we only had two players score -- which is very unusual for us. I thought that hurt."