St. Charles East turns season around
There’s plenty of remarkable things about the St. Charles East boys basketball team taking a 10-10 record into a pair of crucial Upstate Eight Conference River Division road games Thursday and Friday.
The Saints are back to .500 after starting the year losing all four games at their annual Thanksgiving Tournament. They were 0-5 at one point this season and 4-9 at another.
St. Charles East is 6-1 in 2011, the only loss by 3 points to St. Charles North. The Saints are 9-3 in games outside their two tournaments, at home at Thanksgiving and at York at Christmas. They are tied for first in conference with a 6-2 record.
An impressive turnaround for sure, but how about the fact they’ve done all that while getting outrebounded in 19 of their 20 games?
How do you win games when you never win the rebounding battle?
“You can’t always get those extra shots, we are usually one and done,” Saints point guard Charlie Fisher said. “We do what we have to do.”
Willowbrook is the only team St. Charles East has outrebounded.
“That is the one thing we keep working on,” Saints coach Brian Clodi said.
And they’ll need that work with Batavia looming Thursday. The Bulldogs outrebounded the Saints 46-26 in a 63-54 win back in December. Batavia big men Elliott Vaughn (16 rebounds) and Cole Gardner (14 rebounds) combined to outrebound the entire Saints team.
St. Charles East goes right from that challenge to a road game at Elgin Friday. The Maroons, Saints and North Stars enter play this week in a three-way tie for the conference lead at 6-2. Elgin has the added motivation of reversing a 43-41 loss to St. Charles East in the first meeting.
“I love this conference because there’s so much parity,” Clodi said. “Batavia gives us problems with their size. Elgin is playing great basketball and they can’t wait to play us. It’s going to be tough. I just like the way we are playing right now.”
Saints sophomore Kendall Stephens leads the team in scoring at a little over 16 points a game. He’s received scholarship offers from Northwestern, Wisconsin, Illinois, Purdue and DePaul.
In their latest win Friday over Geneva, Stephens only attempted 4 shots. He made all of them including 3 3-pointers, but Clodi said they need to do a better job getting their star involved when teams dedicate their defensive game plan to taking Stephens out of the game. Both Geneva and St. Charles North did that effectively recently.
“We are working on that,” Clodi said of the box-and-1 and face guarding Stephens. “We showed him the North game film, we thought he could be more aggressive. We’ve seen it two or three times now, we are learning how to play it. We have to get the ball in his hands, let him make plays.
“Curl tighter, get to the free-throw line, that’s what he has to do. You can’t just live on that arc. Now you have to cut and curl and get post touches. I have to do a better job of getting him in the post. He can score in there. He’s unselfish, our whole team is unselfish.”
The good news for the Saints has been the play of guards Fisher and Spencer Motley. They combined for 30 points against Geneva.
“(Fisher) is one of the keys why we are playing so well,” Clodi said. “He plays unbelievable defense, making plays, he comes to the gym every morning and works on this shot.
“Spence is capable of getting 20 every night. Spence was our best player in the summer. We keep riding Spence to make the plays he’s making. We just need him to keep growing, keep making plays.”
Excellent effort: Geneva was the latest to capitalize on the Saints’ lack of height when it outrebounded St. Charles East 31-21 Friday.Senior Dan Trimble led the way with 15 rebounds, impressing coach Phil Ralston with the way he was able to impact the game even when his shot wasn#146;t falling.#147;There#146;s not many teams we can say we have a size advantage and this is one of them,#148; Ralston said. #147;I thought, especially Trimble, we battled. It seemed everything that was going off the glass he was very aggressive and made a big difference. He played a whale of a ballgame in that sense.#148;Defensive help: When St. Charles North found itself chasing a double-digit deficit Saturday against St. Joseph in the fourth quarter, one of the substitutes North Stars coach Tom Poulin called on was senior Brandon Baymon.Baymon just became eligible at the start of the second semester. He had to sit out the first half of the season as a late transfer from Elgin.Other races: The Upstate Eight River isn#146;t the only tight race. Kaneland (13-8, 5-2) can make its regular-season ending game Feb. 25 at Rochelle (17-8, 6-1) for all the marbles in the Northern Illinois Big 12 if it keeps winning, starting Friday when it hosts DeKalb.#147;It#146;s going to be tough every night,#148; Kaneland coach Brian Johnson said of the first-year conference. #147;DeKalb still has some wins in them. I think every night is going to be competitive.#148;While West Aurora (12-7, 7-2) needs help to catch Glenbard East (17-3, 9-0) in the DuPage Valley Conference, the Blackhawks are showing signs of being a dangerous team to play in the postseason.West Aurora won in overtime Friday against Wheaton North and double overtime Saturday against Jacobs.Junior Juwan Starks continues to lead the way. After being slowed by injuries for a stretch of three games that ended with a 6-point night against North Lawndale #8212; his only single digit game of the year #8212; Starks looked more like his normal self with 24 points Friday against Wheaton North and 19 Saturday against Jacobs.While Starks is averaging 17.7 points and 6.1 rebounds a game, West Aurora coach Gordie Kerkman would like to see the offense come a little easier.#147;We have to get him better looks,#148; Kerkman said. #147;Some of the time he#146;s not working as hard to get open as he could. They (Jacobs) just hounded him tonight. They were right on his tail.#148;Another famous father: Kendall Stephens isn#146;t the only area player with Big Ten bloodlines.Kenny Battle Jr. gave the Blackhawks a lift Saturday against Jacobs at Night of Hoops with 14 points off the bench. Battle, the son of West Aurora great and former Illinois and NBA player Kenny Battle, is in his first year at his dad#146;s school after playing last year at Oswego East. #147;It#146;s going way better than last year,#148; Battle said. #147;I I fit in with the team well and I like playing with them.#148;Battle, who has four younger brothers and a younger sister ranging from 14 to 6 years old, has raised his scoring average to 5.6 points a game while coming off the bench. He#146;s shooting 52.2 percent from the field and 70 percent at the line.#147;He#146;s helped me a lot, getting stronger and finishing at the basket,#148; Battle said of his dad.On the money: Batavia senior Jesse Coffey made 3 of 3 free throws as part of his 25-point game in a loss to Simeon Saturday night in front of a packed gym at Batavia#146;s Night of Hoops. There#146;s nobody else you would want at the line in a pressure situation. Saturday#146;s total brings Coffey to 45 of 51 on the season. The Taylor University bound guard hit 55 of 60 during his junior year regular season and 57 of 65 overall for 102 of 116 the last two years, an 87.9 percent clip.