Glenbard West gives St. Charles East a scare
One sign of a good basketball team is winning without its best stuff.
When St. Charles East deadeye guard Cole Gentry goes 2 of 5 from the free-throw line it's an off night. Perhaps it was the 10-day layoff, the Tuesday nonconference game, but host Glenbard West had that layoff, too.
The Hilltoppers also had 20 points from guard Alex Passi and 17 from forward Justin Pierce to put the DeKalb Holiday Tournament champion on the ropes. The Saints scrambled back in the last minute to win 61-58 and improve to 13-1.
"I think we kind of let it get to our head, all the attention we were getting recently," said Gentry, whose 16 points led teammates Mick Vyzral and Jake Asquini with 14 apiece.
"We need to kind of lock back in," Gentry said. "This will be a good kind of wakeup call for us, just to know we can play with anybody but anybody can play with us if we don't play well."
In a fourth quarter in which St. Charles East and Glenbard West (6-7) combined for 55 points and swapped leads nine times, the Hilltoppers led 56-55 on Passi's layup off Aidan Gould's inbounds baseball pass with 1:22 left to play.
Saints coach Patrick Woods called time, and with 51.2 seconds remaining Gentry drove, scored and was fouled. He missed the free throw but came up with his fourth steal and drove the lane. Passi blocked the shot, St. Charles East sneaked the offensive rebound and Asquini scored for a 59-56 St. Charles East lead with 32 seconds to play.
"I thought it was a great, great test and a great character builder for us tonight," Woods said.
Glenbard West missed a 3-pointer under pressure with nine seconds left. After another Woods timeout Asquini sank two free throws with 7.4 seconds left. Gould scored on a putback just before the buzzer.
Asquini, who scored 10 fourth-quarter points, said at the end of a thriller "you have got nothing to lose."
"On a play like that where Cole's going down 1-on-1 with a kid you just follow it, you never know what's going to happen," the senior guard said.
Usually you do know - Gentry will score with the right or left hand. But just because the .500 Hilltoppers nearly knocked off the Upstate Eight Conference River Division leader didn't mean Glenbard West coach Tim Hoder saw it as a moral victory.
"No, not at all, not at all," the coach said. "You have a game when you're in a position where you can win a game, you've got to make some plays down the stretch and win the game."