Bartlett's sizzling start sinks St. Charles North
The one player St. Charles North coach Tom Poulin didn't want to see left open Wednesday night at the Class 4A St. Charles East regional spent most of the first quarter like he was still in the pregame 3-point contest.
Six-foot-3 guard Matt Chaltin nailed 4 straight 3s in the first six minutes of the game. The Hawks scored the first 13 points, led 33-16 at halftime and were up by as much as 21 points in the second half before leaving St. Charles with a 67-58 victory, the second straight year the Hawks have ended the North Stars' season.
No. 3 seed Bartlett (17-14) will play No. 1 South Elgin (15-12) for the regional championship at 7:30 p.m. Friday. It's a rematch of last year's title game won by the Hawks. The teams split two regular season meetings this season.
"It was just one of those starts to the game where we had it rolling and it took them awhile to get going," Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith said. "We played the game plan to perfection."
Chaltin started with a 3 on Bartlett's opening possession. After a Lorenzo Mitchell putback, Chaltin hit a pull-up jumper and back-to-back 3s from the same right corner spot with no North Star in sight despite Chaltin entering the game with 58 3-pointers and what Poulin called "the focal point" of his team's attention.
"I'm responsible for that, this one is on me for the hole we dug ourselves," said Poulin, who was so discouraged by how his team played man-to-man defense in a loss to Geneva Friday he didn't think that defense would work against Bartlett's athleticism.
"We tried to mix some things up and go with some traps and zones. Obviously it didn't work."
After Kyle Nelson's drive finally put the North Stars on the board five minutes into the game, Chaltin drilled his fourth 3-pointer for a 16-3 lead. He finished with 14 points in the first quarter as the Hawks led 18-5, a similar shooting display as when he scored Bartlett's first 19 points against Moline.
"I haven't been used to that (zones) this season, I've seen a lot of face-guards," Chaltin said. "They went in the zones and I was just getting in the gaps."
Wolfsmith said his team expected to see the North Stars' matchup zone after the Hawks struggled against it against Waubonsie Valley.
"We practiced hard against it," Wolfsmith said. "That's (Chaltin) our zone breaker. We are looking for Matt and you saw what he did. He got hot at the right time."
When the North Stars (14-14) did switch to man Poulin's fears were realized at the North Stars had trouble containing Lance Whitaker (19 points, 7 rebounds) and Mitchell (16 points, 10 rebounds). Poulin's frustration boiled over with a technical foul early in the second quarter.
Defensively, Mitchell held his own against St. Charles North big men Nelson (14 points, 10 rebounds 3 blocked shots) and Josh Mikes (17 points). The Hawks were so strong inside, outrebounding the North Stars 32-24, they forced Mikes and Nelson to get most of their points on jump shots.
Wolfsmith also praised the "good minutes" he got from reserves Joe Sabatino and Chris Baumann battling inside.
"We had guys step up," said Chaltin, who finished with a team-high 19 points. "Lorenzo played like a beast. It was a great team win."
Bartlett took its biggest lead at 39-18 early in the third quarter. The North Stars answered with 3 straight 3s from Nelson, Tony Neari and Quinten Payne to start a comeback. Mitchell's fastbreak dunk over Payne to end the third quarter kept the Hawks ahead 48-36.
After their lackluster first half, the North Stars forced 12 turnovers in the second half and eventually got as close as 54-47 with 2:43 left in the game.
It was too little, too late for the North Stars. Whitaker answered with 4 straight free throws, and Marcus Aluquin came in and hit 4 more at the line as the Hawks finished 19 of 27.
"If you compare the first half to the second half with how active we were and how much heart we played with, this is a regional, that's how you should play 32 minutes," Poulin said.
Payne led all scorers with 20 points including 10 in the fourth quarter. Only four North Stars scored in the game, a disappointing end to a season that began with such high hopes for a team ranked No. 3 in the preseason Top 20. It also ended the boys basketball season for the Tri-Cities teams with the North Stars, St. Charles East, Batavia and Geneva going 1-4 in regional play this week.
"We were inconsistent game by game," Poulin said. "There's games we looked like a 20-win team, there's games we looked like a 10-win team. So you end up at .500. It's not for lack of effort, it's not for a lack of trying or lack of talent. It's up to me to figure out why that happened and make sure it doesn't happen again."