St. Charles East drops double overtime thriller
In a bit of foreshadowing, the starters posted for Tuesday's boys basketball game included St. Charles East's No. 5 Dom Urso.
In fact the senior guard did not start. Once off the Saints bench, however, he made Plainfield East do everything it could to finish.
Behind five 3-pointers and a career-high 20 points from Urso, plus 16 by Kendall Stephens and 13 from Dominic Adduci, St. Charles East pushed Plainfield East, the No. 8 ranked team in Class 4A and the No. 1 seed at the East Aurora sectional, into double-overtime before the visiting Bengals won, 79-69.
"In warm-ups I actually didn't feel good, but I feel like if I can hit a couple shots and start to get the feel of the game, then anything can happen. I made a couple shots, so they all started falling for me," said Urso, who came in averaging less than 4 points a game.
Urso canned his first 3, from the top of the key, in a first quarter St. Charles East (12-11) trailed 16-8. It appeared as though Plainfield East (23-1) might make it academic, building on a 37-29 halftime lead to go up 46-31 at the 5:18 point of the third quarter.
The Saints used a 15-5 run to enter the fourth trailing just 51-46. A David Mason 3 and two of them by Urso sandwiched the rally.
"It showed how much pride we had on our home court," said Urso, who started the fourth quarter with a fadeaway 3 from the right elbow.
The Saints took their first lead, 56-55, on an Adduci 3, and led 60-57 when Johnny Hondlik found Stephens for a backdoor layup with 1:51 left in regulation.
"We didn't do a very good job of defending their screens," said Bengals coach Branden Adkins. "We let them drive past us on a lot of occasions. That's not characteristic of our team."
But shortly thereafter Plainfield East's Mack Brown hit a 3 from the left side to tie the score at 60-60, where it stood entering the first overtime.
Stephens lamented "tiny things" that didn't allow the Saints to close it out.
"An offensive rebound that we needed to get and then we would have had the ball up 2 and they would end up fouling us," said Stephens, who fouled out with 1:34 left in the first overtime. "Instead we gave them the ball back and they ended up tying it up. It was just things like that. We needed to capitalize, and we didn't."
Another Adduci 3-pointer with 40.1 seconds remaining in the first overtime gave St. Charles East a 68-67 lead, but with 27.2 seconds left the Bengals' Myles Walters made 1 of 2 foul shots to force a second extra session.
After some scoreless back-and-forth the Saints' run was done. In the last three minutes Plainfield East's Jawan Straughter overcame 4 straight missed free throws with 6 straight makes. For the game the Bengals made 21 of 36 free throws to 9 of 13 for St. Charles East.
"I wasn't thinking about the last shots, I was coming to knock down the next," said Straughter, whose 20 points followed Brian Bennett's 24 for the visitors.
Not known for enjoying moral victories even sometimes in victory Saints coach Patrick Woods saw the bright side.
"It's a little frustrating in the fact that I thought we had opportunities we missed out on," he said, "but our kids showed a lot of character tonight and it shows that we're getting ready for a state playoff run."
Nazareth 54, Aurora Central 53:
In LaGrange Park, Aurora Central (7-17) lost the tight decision to the nonconference Roadrunners (9-15). Joey McEachern led ACC with 12 points, followed by Paul Kaminsky with 11 and Robert DeMyers with 10.