Geneva tops Huntley to reach championship bracket

Geneva and Huntley entered their third game of pool play Wednesday at the 82nd annual Chuck Dayton Holiday Tournament at opposite ends of the basketball spectrum.

The defending tournament champion Vikings owned two tournament wins by a combined 46 points over the same Wilmington and Rockford East teams that defeated the Red Raiders.

It's dangerous, however, to compare scores too much, as Huntley proved by pushing Geneva for 32 minutes.

While it wasn't enough for a victory, Huntley can take some solace in giving Geneva its toughest pool play game, a 52-43 Vikings win.

Geneva (10-2) advances to the championship bracket where it meets Rockford Jefferson at 8:30 p.m. tonight. DeKalb meets highly touted Chicago Vocational in the other semifinal at 7 p.m., with the winners playing for the championship Saturday night.

Huntley (7-4) plays North Grand at 10:30 a.m. today.

"Huntley is a lot better than an 0-3 team," Geneva coach Phil Ralston said. "I think our pool was a little more difficult than meets the eye. We're happy we got three wins. I know Huntley is 0-3 but it would be surprise me if they didn't win two games the next two days."

Nolan Block's pair of 3-pointers and Scott Wendt's bucket staked Geneva to an 8-0 lead. Huntley basically played Geneva even from there, never falling behind by more than 11 points but never really in position to steal the game.

"We played just good enough to win as coach would say," Wendt said. "We need to be smarter with the ball and not (have) as many turnovers and get better shots. If we stay with our team offense I think we have a good chance of going all the way."

Geneva shot well, hitting 54 percent from the field and 91 percent at the line. The Vikings led 31-23 at halftime and 46-35 going to the fourth quarter.

Tyler Brunschon brought the Red Raiders within 48-41 with 2:27 to play. After Wendt found Brandon Beitzel alone underneath, Brunschon answered with another bucket, then drove and scored again - only to see it waved off on a charging call.

That play not only would have made it a 50-45 game with a free throw coming, it was the fifth foul on Brunschon who led all scorers with 16 points.

"If we get that lead down to 5 maybe the pressure switches to them and it could have been a game," Huntley coach Marty Manning said. "But that is kind of how it is, we dug ourselves a hole getting 10 or 12 down."

Alex Frederking's 2 free throws with 1:17 left were the final points, though unfortunately for Geneva with 14 seconds left Michael Santacaterina injured his right ankle on a drive down the lane and had to be helped off the court.

Ralston said it's too early to know if the senior will play Wednesday.

"That's one where you wish 14 seconds would tick off before something like that happens," Ralston said. "Hopefully it is nothing too serious."

Block's 15 points, Beitzel's 12 and Wendt's 9 led Geneva, who is looking forward to playing a Rockford Jefferson team that just beat St. Charles North 59-49 on Dec. 12.

"We know it is hard to repeat and teams are gunning for us and there's a target on our back," Wendt said. "These next couple games we have a real test coming up against the better teams."

"They (Jefferson) are quick, they can shoot and they can sore a lot of points," Ralston said. "We'll have to do what we do and make sure the game is slowed down so we can give our kids a chance to win."

Dylan Neukirch added 9 points for Huntley and Justin Frederick pulled down a game-high 7 rebounds.

"Definitely our best of the three (here)," Manning said. "The first two games our effort wasn't there and neither was our execution. We lost a couple games we could have won.

"We were worried about getting ourselves back on track. I know they are a good team and even if we played well the way they shoot the ball it could be a long night for us. Our thing was we needed to play harder and execute on the offensive end better. For the most part we did that. Tonight was a step forward from the previous two."