St. Charles North rebounds, beats rival
The ability to shake off a difficult loss is a daunting task any time.
Try doing it in a span of less than 24 hours.
St. Charles North (11-7, 5-3) bounced back from Friday night's disappointing 60-58 loss to Geneva with a huge second half against St. Charles East Saturday night.
Relying on relentless rebounding and a suffocating defense, the host North Stars limited the Saints (11-6, 5-2) to just 13 second-half points - 5 of which came in the game's final minute - during their 61-43 Upstate Eight Conference River Division girls basketball victory.
"It's what I've been asking the whole time - to make sure we're locking down defensively," said North Stars coach Sean Masoncup. "We can score. It's whether we want to lock in and be aggressive on the defensive end."
Led by Morgan Rosencrants' game-high 14 rebounds and 11 boards from Nichole Davidson, the North Stars battled their way to a 42-30 edge on the glass.
"I think they (the Saints) only got one offensive rebound in the second half," said Masoncup. "We really challenged Morgan Rosencrants to get offensive rebounds and she had 14 (total rebounds) for the game. She really carried us in that second quarter getting us offensive rebounds."
Playing its first game in 2 weeks, St. Charles East looked fresh at the outset as it jumped out to a 19-14 first-quarter lead.
Saints senior guard Katie Claussner helped get the rest of her teammates involved early with 4 first-quarter assists as 8 different St. Charles East players scored points.
The North Stars responded as seniors Ashling Davern and Davidson combined for 14 second-period points to offset St. Charles East freshman forward Sara Rosenfeldt's 7 points.
St. Charles North led 32-30 at halftime.
The North Stars began to pull away during an 11-0 surge over the final 4:45 of the third quarter that included 6 points from Davidson (20 points) and 4 from Davern (15 points) - including a 3-point play with 1:23 left in the period.
"Ash is just a tough-nosed kid," said Masoncup. "Once we get her out on the wing, we've got bigs like Claire (Jakaitis) and Morgan (Rosencrants) that can get them out and Kyla (Helsel) laying it out there. I thought we just beat them down the court tonight."
Defensively, meanwhile, the North Stars held the Saints without a basket for nearly 11 ½ minutes.
"We did not play together well," said Saints coach Lori Drumtra. "We started to rush again because we were behind instead of weathering the storm. North turned up its defensive pressure and we didn't respond to it very well."
Helsel added 9 points, 5 rebounds and 5 steals while Rosencrants and Jakaitis finished with 8 and 6 points, respectively.
Davern, who spent the majority of the night trying to keep Claussner in her sight, held the Saints' standout to 9 points on 4 of 17 shooting from the floor.
"It's tiring," said Davern. "She's a great player. We know that she likes to go left so we tried to take away whatever we could. I knew that I had help-side (defense) so it gave me some leeway to go out a little bit farther."
Masoncup was pleased with his team's makeup after the loss to Geneva.
"The thing I'm most proud of is how much they've grown mentally - that they can take a negative loss and be ready to go the next day," said the coach.
Chloe John scored 6 points while Kyra Washington added 5 points and 12 rebounds for the Saints.
"I'm disappointed with our lack of sense of urgency," said Drumtra. "It's North - you put everything on the floor. Even if you can't buy a bucket, you find a way to get it done on the defensive end and we weren't doing that."