Wheaton North hands Naperville Central 1st DVC loss
Coming out of the team huddle at the start of the fourth quarter Saturday afternoon at Naperville Central, Wheaton North coach David Eaton had a message for point guard Fantasia Vine.
"I said look, you have to carry us through here. You have to step up and be the player that we need," Eaton said. "Obviously, she did."
Vine scored 11 of her game-high 15 points in the fourth quarter to help Wheaton North pull away for a 62-52 victory in a key DuPage Valley Conference game in Naperville.
The Falcons led at halftime, but the Redhawks caught up early in the fourth quarter. Emma Donahue's three-point play tied the game at 41 with 6:38 to go, but Falcons junior Lauren Graham and Vine scored the next 9 points before Donahue scored again for the Redhawks at the 3:18 mark.
"They play hard," Redhawks coach Andy Nussbaum said of the Falcons. "They give everything they have. We felt like we needed to match their intensity, and I thought for the first 26 minutes we were OK. And then from 41-41 to 50-41, I'm not sure exactly what happened but that was really the key point in the game."
Wheaton North (7-7, 3-1) and Naperville Central (14-3, 4-1) trail West Chicago in the DVC.
"I actually felt relieved because they were undefeated (in the DVC)," Vine said of the Redhawks. "After we lost to West Chicago, we just wanted to come back and show them what we're all really about, defend our conference championship."
"It's huge, especially coming down here. This is a tough place to play," Eaton said.
The teams played as if the conference championship were on the line already.
"We didn't really keep our poise like we should have," Nussbaum said. "We let their physicalness bother us, and we just didn't react very well. We're 17 games in; that's disappointing. We ought to have better poise than that."
After struggling early this season, Eaton hopes his team is starting to play like it's capable of playing.
"I knew that our team was young," he said. "I didn't think it was going to take us this long to get there, but I think our kids have really gotten it."
Sophomore guard Maddie Baillie and Graham each added 12 points for the Falcons. Junior A.K. Feltes had 9 points and 9 rebounds.
Donahue led the Redhawks with 14 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocked shots. Jill D'Amico added 13 points. Emma Ondik, matched up against Vine, scored 7 after injuring her ankle early in the game.
"It was a pretty gutty effort by her - because I'm sure she's in a lot of pain - to play the whole game," Nussbaum said.