Conrad, St. Charles North hand Larkin 7th straight loss
Sometimes you need that special spark on the road in the Upstate Eight, and St. Charles North was glad Chris Conrad was more of a flame than a spark.
Trailing Larkin by 3 with 5:20 left in the second quarter, the silky smooth fiery touch of Conrad ignited a 12-3 run of his own. It began with 2 layups that cut the deficit to 2. Then, he nailed a left corner 3-pointer, followed that up with a 10-foot hanger in the lane, and when another left corner 3-pointer flushed with 2:51 to go, he pushed St. Charles North (10-7, 4-3) up 32-26. Not looking back, the North Stars missed only 12 of their 37 shots taken and used a solid inside-out game to hand Larkin its seventh-consecutive loss, 67-59 in Elgin Thursday night.
"We needed a spark on the road. It's hard to get a conference road game," said Conrad, who finished with 19 points and 5 assists. "My teammates found me, and they were really doubling Josh (Mikes), we had some openings and I knocked some down."
The big story coming in was if Larkin's Garrett McDaniel could handle himself inside with North's posts Kyle Nelson and Ryan Brown. McDaniel, giving up 7 inches of height to both, scored just 4 points, getting his first basket in the fourth when the game was out of reach. While McDaniel grabbed 8 offensive rebounds, Larkin (7-10, 1-3) couldn't knock any shots down. Making just 18 of 56, 10 were made from behind the arc, and during that torrid second quarter stretch, Larkin shot 33 percent. Capitalizing on the horrible shooting and the size, the North Stars went inside-out, finding Mikes and Brown before Conrad's perimeter onslaught ensued.
"I thought we did a really good job of making the extra pass after the extra pass," North coach Tom Poulin said. "Larkin did a real good job of rotating to that next pass, and taking it away, and then guys did a good job of finding people second and third options, and a lot of times those are our big guys around the rim.
Brown and Mikes got touches early, as North jumped to a 14-9 first quarter lead behind those two. Jermaine Clements, who finished with a team-high 19 points, gave Larkin a 23-20 lead on a left wing 3 with under 5:30 remaining in the second quarter. Clements knocked in 4 from downtown in the first half, but after he left with an unknown ailment - he returned in the third - Conrad's prowess took over, and North had a 9-point lead at halftime.
After half, Larkin saw a heavy dose of Brown and Mikes, as Brown scored 6 on easy layups by from an unselfish North Star team, ticketed with 17 assists. Brown's layup with 6:15 in the third gave North a 41-29 lead, and both finished an 8-4 run with a Mikes' putback with 3:58 left and Brown's bucket with 1:41 remaining, stretching the lead to 49-33.
"They got good looks. Their size may have wore us down at the end," said Royals coach Deryn Carter. "When you're not making shots, you're putting a lot of pressure on your defense. Putting a lot of pressure on your defense when you're undersized is not necessarily good."
Mikes scored 17, Brown finished with 13, North out-rebounded Larkin 28-23, shooting 68 percent. Larkin's Ryan Smith finished with 15, all his shots from 3-point range.