Glenbard East 40, Glenbard North 31
At this point of the season, Glenbard East gladly will take survival over playing well.
In the fourth meeting between District 87 and DuPage Valley Conference rivals, the Rams overcame a rough night to beat Glenbard North 40-31 in Monday's Class 4A Waubonsie Valley boys basketball regional quarterfinals.
Fifteenth-seeded Glenbard East (13-13) moves on to tonight's semifinals in Aurora to take on second-seeded host Waubonsie Valley for a spot in Friday's regional final.
After Monday's game against the Panthers (6-20), the Rams know their play must improve to stay alive.
"It was pretty bad," said Rams junior Paul Sanders, who scored a game-high 16 points. "At the end we kind of picked up the pace, worked hard and finished it off. But for the first three quarters it was pretty rough."
A Reid Hulett 3-pointer pulled Glenbard North within 26-25 early in the fourth quarter. Three more times the Panthers came within a point, but they never could claim a fourth-quarter lead.
Two free throws by Hulett with 1:26 left made it 32-31, but the Panthers failed to score again. Glenbard East closed on an 8-0 run, a burst started by a Sanders dunk.
The Rams' Derak Stanback, who scored all 9 of his points from the line, nailed four straight free throws to extend the gap. Sanders added a basket in the waning seconds to account for the final.
Glenbard East scored 16 of its points in the fourth quarter while the Panthers tallied 13 of their 31. Prior to that, getting points of any kind was like pulling teeth.
Both teams made only 7 of 39 shots through the first three quarters -- including 1-of-16 third-quarter shooting by Glenbard North. Despite tallying 2 third-quarter points and being held scoreless for nearly eight minutes, the Panthers trailed only 24-18 early in the final frame.
James Fleming led the Panthers with 9 points while Kaaran Singh added 8 points.
"You're in a scoring drought but you don't see the score stretch out," said Panthers coach Erin Dwyer. "You try to stay positive and make something good happen out of it. It just never did.
"We had our chances," he said. "You hold someone to 40 points, you think you can make something happen."
Glenbard East had 30 free-throw attempts to the Panthers' 9, but the Rams made only 16. In the crunch time of the fourth quarter, however, they made 8 of 9 attempts.
"In the playoffs it doesn't matter how," said Rams coach Scott Miller. "You've just got to advance."