Naperville N. stops Benet's streak at 43

Through the years Naperville North's boys basketball team has enjoyed quite a rivalry with Benet.

The Huskies got some major bragging rights on Tuesday by breaking Benet's 39-game regular-season winning streak with a 44-40 victory in Naperville.

One of those wins came at Naperville North's expense early last season. Benet also edged the Huskies in double overtime to claim a regional title.

All of that played as motivation for Naperville North (4-2), which broke out to a 9-point fourth-quarter lead before holding off a late Benet (4-1) rally.

A game-tying 3-point attempt by Benet's John Enochs went just off the mark with about 20 seconds left, and Matt Stacho converted a 3-point play at the other end to put the game out of reach at 44-38 with 15 seconds left.

"This is huge," Stacho said. "They were ranked pretty high and we took them down. In our house, too. We wanted it pretty bad considering they stormed our court last year after that (regional) loss."

A tough night offensively left both sides leaning on defense. The Redwings were without Pat McInerney because of a wrist injury, making it even tougher to score.

Benet hit only 27 percent of its shots, including 6-of-30 shooting in the first three quarters. Many of the misses came on the perimeter, but a bunch more were on putbacks.

"We struggled from the field," said Benet coach Gene Heidkamp. "When we got shots we didn't knock them down. The tempo of the game was such that we just didn't get into a flow offensively."

Benet thrived early by breaking out to a 10-2 lead. Naperville North stymied the Redwings after that, however, limiting them to 30 points over the final 26 minutes of the game.

At the same time the Huskies scored the most points on Benet this season. It wasn't by much, but no other team has scored more than 40 points on the Redwings so far.

It was a collective effort, although Stacho was huge in coming off the bench to score all 11 of his points in the fourth quarter. Kyle Lindberg and Max Lewis scored 7 points apiece as the Huskies' bench tallied 25 points.

Benet sophomore Sean O'Mara scored 7 of his team-high 13 points in the fourth quarter. Enochs and Bobby Wehrli each had 8 points.

"I was so proud of our boys," said Huskies coach Jeff Powers. "They persevered after getting down early."