Batavia has smarts to match talent
It's really a shame Jack Scalcucci doesn't have anything going for him.
Well, other than being an all-area wide receiver in football. Or a starting guard on a state-ranked basketball team. Oh yeah, he also was also Homecoming king last fall.
Yep, poor guy. Thank goodness he scored 21 points in Batavia's 88-73 victory in front of a sold-out crowd at Geneva Friday night so he has something to feel good about.
The kicker? He's near the top of his senior class academically.
The thing is, Scalcucci isn't alone. The Bulldogs' grade point averages are more impressive than their scoring averages.
Point guard Steve Ideran is No. 26 in the senior class, with center Jeff Roeske No. 12 and Scalcucci No. 6. Rashad Mitchell is doing really well too, and Nick Fruendt is at the top of the sophomore class.
Batavia's starting five does better in the classroom than they do on the court, which is really saying something considering the team has won 17 straight games and is playing at a level that could take them all the way to the state tournament in Peoria next month.
What does all this have to do with basketball? For starters, it's something each of those five players should be proud of, their parents should be proud of, their coaches should be proud of, and all the Bulldog fans rooting for them can feel good about knowing how well the kids are doing off the court.
It's also the type of positive story that should be publicized, especially when you hear so much negative in the sports world.
And it doesn't hurt on the court to have five players who more often than not make the smart plays.
Combine the smart plays and hustle with the talent and experience, it's a combination anyone is going to have trouble with.
Like Geneva did Friday.
"You score in the 70s it is supposed to be enough," Pease said. "Not against the Batavia Bulldogs."
Geneva might have one more crack left at Batavia, which would come in a possible regional final.
"We're looking forward to it, that would be a great challenge," Ideran said. "We always say, 'Anyone, any time, any place.'"
Go figure, the Bulldogs looking forward to another game against Geneva and not being overconfident.
Yep, they're too smart for that.
If ever the saying "Let sleeping dogs lie" rang true, it had to be in the closing seconds of the first half Friday night during the third meeting of rivals Batavia and Geneva.
Batavia sophomore Nick Fruendt was at the free-throw line with the Bulldogs leading 34-32 against a Geneva team making play after play to stay in the game with the state's ninth-ranked team.
Geneva fans started the "O-ver-ra-ted" chant after Fruendt missed the first of two free throws.
You hear all kinds of chants at basketball games, especially ones between heated rivals like these two schools. Some are clever, some are mean, but rarely do you hear one more dead wrong than that.
At that point, Fruendt had a relatively quiet 8 points and his team held just a 2-point lead.
Like the cliche goes, that's when you should let sleeping Bulldogs lie.
In a matter of seconds, both of those numbers would start shooting upward.
Fruendt drained the second free throw. Geneva still had the ball with a chance for the last shot of the first half, but Fruendt stepped into the passing lane, came up with the steal, then drove the length of the court and made the move of the season.
In one fluid motion, Fruendt took the ball behind his back, separating himself from the defender, and laid it in to give Batavia both a 37-32 lead at halftime, and more importantly, all the momentum.
"Probably the first time I ever did that," Fruendt said. "I don't know how I did that. It just got everybody real excited. It gave us some momentum.
"It was one of my better moves."
That's an understatement. It's impossible to do the play justice describing it in this space. Just judge from the reaction it caused.
The layup sent a raucous Batavia student section into even more of a frenzy. It had assistant coaches Ed Cange and P.J. White shaking their heads and smiling as they walked off the court. It sent all the Batavia players running into the locker room with that all-important momentum on their side.
This is how teammate Jack Scalcucci described it.
"It was exactly what he needed to do," said Scalcucci. "It was fundamentally what he needed to do. That's great, that's what he does so well.
"That was huge, the lead was fluctuating, and we had so much intensity coming into the locker room. We were so excited and we just wanted to get out there and play and it showed up in the second half."
Batavia outscored Geneva 26-13 in the third quarter. Fruendt scored 20 of his game-high 31 points in the second half.
Just one word to the wise for any future Batavia opponent - give the team and Fruendt the respect they deserve. There's nothing overrated at all.
"People are going to doubt us, we just have to play our game and not worry about the haters," Fruendt said. "We have way more supporters."
Batavia 64, Glenbard East 54:ŒIt's here.
Finally.
Barely.
West Aurora, with its 27-1 record, against Batavia, with its 27-1 record, in the East Aurora sectional championship game Friday night.
The matchup everyone has been waiting all year to see was about five minutes away from not happening.
Glenbard East did its best to spoil the battle of Fox Valley heavyweights, leading by 5 points at halftime and sending a huge scare at Bulldog Nation.
(Bulldog Nation, by the way, never sounded better than Wednesday night. West Aurora has an excellent student section in the Rowdies, but it looked like there were twice as many Batavia students there than West Aurora had the previous night. And the rest of the Bulldog fan base filled up way more than its share of the seats in a nearly jam-packed East Aurora gym. I'm guessing 75 percent of the crowd was rooting for Batavia.)
All those fans nearly left brokenhearted. The palms were sweaty and hearts were beating several paces faster when Jim Roberts called timeout with 5:36 remaining and the score tied at 42.
Batavia's dream season certainly was on the line. The Bulldogs have been so good this year that they really don't have much experience in close games.
How would the team handle a deficit? Would the pressure of their season ending cause them to play tight down the stretch? Would there be uncharacteristic turnovers or missed free throws? It certainly wouldn't be the first time a favorite has felt the pressure and struggled to deal with it.
Batavia passed all those tests with flying colors. The Bulldogs simply willed their way back into the game early in the second half with second-chance baskets and a pressure defense that forced 7 Glenbard East turnovers in the key third quarter.
Then with the game tied in the fourth, Batavia's skill took over, with Rashad Mitchell and Nick Fruendt both draining clutch 3-pointers to open up a 50-44 lead, which felt like about a 20-point margin as close as the game had been all night. Batavia delivered 12-of-16 shooting at the foul line to pull away.
Fruendt continued his mastery over players with a Northwestern connection. First it was Northwestern-bound Jeff Ryan of Glenbrook South at the Elgin Holiday Tournament, who Fruendt scored 31 against. Wednesday it was Glenbard East's Mike Capocci, who has drawn interest from Northwestern, and Fruendt outscored him 27-8. At this rate Fruendt is going to have much bigger offers than Northwestern coming his way.
That's a couple years into the future. There's nothing like the present for basketball fans. Now we'll get to see if West Aurora defensive stopper T.J. Marion and the rest of the Blackhawks can do something nobody has since Quincy's 1-point win back in early December - beat Batavia.
West Aurora's fans chanted "We want the Bulldogs" Tuesday night, and Batavia responded with "We want West Aurora" Wednesday night.
Looks like everybody has just what they wanted. The marquee matchup is just a day away.
West Aurora 63, Batavia 57:ŒWe didn't get a buzzer-beater. No back-and-forth lead changes down the stretch. Heck, there was only 1 lead change the entire night.
Doesn't matter. West Aurora-Batavia lived up to all the hype.
That's not easy to do, considering how much people were looking forward to this matchup for so long. Expectations were so high it seemed impossible for the action to match them.
But the game did. It gave the standing-room-only crowd everything it could want, other than a victory for the ones cheering for Batavia.
From talking to coaches before this game trying to get a little insight into what should happen, I think Rock Island coach Thom Sigel's following comment might have wound up being the most telling.
"Batavia will have to do a good job of getting a body on guys out of their zone," said the Rocks' coach, whose team lost to both the Bulldogs and Blackhawks.
West Aurora's dominance on the boards turned out to be too much for Batavia to overcome. There were a few different numbers on press row and from the team stats, but a consensus was at least 20 more rebounds for the Blackhawks.
"The emphasis all season has been on rebounding," said West Aurora sophomore forward Tyler Thompson, who grabbed 10.
Another key to the game, how Batavia would handle West Aurora's pressure, turned out to be a non-factor. In fact, the question should have been how would West Aurora handle Batavia's pressure? The Blackhawks turned the ball over 22 times, 8 more than Batavia, and it was the extra possessions the Bulldogs got off those miscues that helped keep Batavia close when it had such a hard time keeping West Aurora off the glass.
"We did a much poorer job of taking care of the basketball," West Aurora coach Gordie Kerkman said. "I thought (Batavia) got a little tired at the end, but we were starting to get a little mentally tired."
Fans were looking forward to seeing how a premier defensive player T.J. Marion matched up against a dynamite offensive scorer like Nick Fruendt. Just like the game, that battle lived up to the hype, even if they weren't matched up on every possession.
Marion couldn't have been better, holding Fruendt down on the times West Aurora played man-to-man, then doing every thing else possible to help his team win - rebounding, scoring, no-look passes and quick touch passes for layups, etc. In short, Marion pretty much did what he always does...everything.
Fruendt had his spectacular moments too, just whetting the appetite of what is in store for his junior and senior seasons. His steal and dunk electrified Batavia's crowd heading into the fourth quarter, and he wound up with 16 points.
"T.J. was bumping and grinding me," Fruendt said. "It took a toll.
"I couldn't have asked for a better group of senior teammates."
Feb 5, 2006
Usually when a player scores 21 points in the fourth quarter, it is a significant development.
Not so in the final game of the Batavia Night of Hoops.
East Aurora senior Isiah Anderson pumped in 21 of the Tomcats' 30 fourth-quarter points Saturday night in Batavia, but the Bulldogs' Nick Fruendt was resting comfortably on the bench for most of the late onslaught.
The Bulldogs' super sophomore had the game of his young career, pouring in a career-high 36 points as Batavia had all five starters in double figures in its 92-75 victory over East Aurora.
Batavia is 20-1 on the year; East Aurora is 13-11 after becoming the Bulldogs' 16th straight victim.
"I got into a good rhythm," said Fruendt. "I wouldn't be able to do this without my teammates. We turned up the defensive intensity (in the second quarter). It was a special night."