St. Charles East 57, Glenbard East 53

With plenty of energy and talent on display Tuesday night, both Glenbard East and visiting St. Charles East showed that they're the type of teams that can cause some damage when the boys basketball postseason opens soon.

But both the Rams and the Saints also would like to be a little healthier. Glenbard East (11-11) played Tuesday's nonconference game without leading scorer Derak Stanback, who suffered a shoulder injury in Monday's game with Wheaton Warrenville South. The Saints, meanwhile, prevailed 57-53 but had to do so with starting forward Ryan Suits limited to just a couple minutes of action before leaving with what coach Brian Clodi fears could be a season-ending wrist injury.

"Ryan's our best defender, and the last five games he's averaged 14 points a game for us," Clodi said. "After he left for the hospital and we had the early report that it might be a broken wrist, we took 30 seconds as a team at the half to think just how much Ryan means to us. The kids wanted to go out and do whatever it took to try and win this game for Ryan."

St. Charles East (12-10) started the third quarter strong and took a 36-27 lead following a 3-pointer from Zack Scott. But the Rams battled back to close to within 38-35 after freshman Zach Miller's driving basket at the buzzer. It was one of many key plays turned in by a Rams team that just wouldn't let the Saints pull away.

"We were obviously undermanned, but our kids did a great job," Rams coach Scott Miller said. "We kept finding ways to score buckets and get back into it. But we've had a bunch of these (tight) games and lately we're not winning enough of them."

Glenbard East picked up some big contributions inside from the likes of Tom Seagraves, Paul Sanders and Lee Skinner, but the visitors countered with the 6-foot-6 combo of center Kevin Senechalle and forward Collin Pryor. Pryor scored 8 of his game-high 19 points in the fourth quarter, while Senechalle had 14 points and 8 rebounds.

"It was a lot of fun," said Senechalle, who tallied 10 points as the Saints took a 29-25 lead after two quarters. "We came out with all that energy in the third quarter and everything just started clicking."

But the Rams, who got solid play from their young point guard Miller, made the Saints battle to the final horn. Ben Trefilek and Seagraves each hit late 3s to make matters interesting before Pryor helped the visitors prevail by making 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch.

"We did a good job on defense to hold them to 57 and Derak is good for 15 points a game so things could have been different," Seagraves said. "They pressured Zach the whole game and he did great. Today our big thing was bringing the effort."