Naperville North wins in triple OT

Jeff Powers wasn’t sure how his Naperville North boys basketball team would react to the pressure of Friday night’s home game against cross-town rival Naperville Central.

After a rough start — and three overtime periods — the Huskies showed their coach exactly what he wanted to see.

Matt Stacho scored 16 points, Mike Keane added 12, and Naperville North climbed out of an early 10-0 hole to edge Naperville Central 62-58 in triple overtime Friday. The Huskies never trailed after halftime, finally pulling away from the Redhawks with a 6-0 run with less than two minutes to play in the third overtime.

“A game like this, there’s a lot of pressure on the kids and they react to it in different ways,” Powers said. “We finally got something going and got the energy from our crowd.”

Naperville North (11-4, 6-1 DuPage Valley Conference) needed every bit of that energy.

After ending regulation knotted at 46-46, both teams struggled offensively in overtime. It was 53-53 when the Huskies struck first in the third overtime, getting a driving layup from Stacho that made it 55-53 with 2:20 to play.

Naperville Central sophomore Nick Czarnowski answered 50 seconds later with a layup of his own, but senior Chris Mullen put Naperville North ahead for good with a baseline score after a pretty feed from classmate Kyle Lindberg. From there, the Huskies converted 4 of 6 free throws, sweating only a little when Redhawks sophomore Austin Pauga hit a 3-pointer to make it 61-58 with 14.5 seconds to play.

“It was just a battle,” Powers said. “And we got the top end of it.”

Naperville Central looked to have the upper hand early, jumping out to a quick 10-0 lead as Naperville North turned the ball over on six of its first seven possessions.

The Redhawks held the Huskies without a field goal until the 2:50 mark of the first quarter and led comfortably at 19-10 with 4:20 left in the second quarter. But Naperville North closed the half with a 12-2 run, grabbing its first lead when Stacho forced a turnover and beat the halftime buzzer to make it 22-21.

That run stretched to 17-2 in the third quarter — giving Naperville North a 27-21 advantage — before the Redhawks finally recovered.

“We knew once we got started we were just going to keep building, keep going,” Stacho said. “We had a lot of confidence going into the second half and we took off with it.”

Naperville North had chances to win at the end of the first two overtimes but missed shots at the buzzer. Mullen got both shots, closing the first overtime with a jumper from the top of the key that clanged off the back iron and the second with a wild runner.

“We wanted to get the last shot to either go into overtime or win the game,” Powers said. “That’s probably a little bit of bad coaching. I have to get better at end-of-the game plays.”

Naperville Central trailed 40-33 after three quarters and looked like it was in trouble before junior Mike Blaszceyk caught fire in the fourth quarter with three 3-pointers and 11 total points. But poor free-throw shooting caught up to the Redhawks in overtime.

Naperville Central missed the front half of three 1-and-1s in the third overtime, finishing 7 of 15 from the free-throw line in the game.

“We could’ve took control of the last two overtimes, and we missed free throws,” coach Pete Kramer said. “You can question everything else, but the bottom line is our free-throw shooting hurt us today.”

Mullen scored 10 points as the third Naperville North player in double figures.

Pauga led Naperville Central with 15 points, followed closely by Czarnowski’s 13.