Crete-Monee deals St. Charles East a loss
St. Charles East had its fill of Dwayne Rose and Jeremiah Matthews during Tuesday's consolation semifinal against Crete-Monee in the Hinsdale Central Holiday Classic boys basketball tournament.
The pair combined for 57 points to lead the Warriors to a 75-65 victory.
The Saints will conclude tournament play against Foreman at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
“Obviously that kid (Matthews) who had 36 points is really good. He had 17 in the first half so he had balanced scoring,” Saints coach Pat Woods said. “He was feeling it. That last one kind of broke our back a little bit. It put them up 4 and it was kind of a desperation shot, but when you're on fire you can pretty much throw up anything and it'll go in.”
St. Charles East (8-4) enjoyed its biggest lead of the game at 13-6 midway through the first quarter, but the Warrirors rallied before the teams settled in, going back and forth until the Warriors pulled away at the end of the third quarter.
The game featured 4 ties and 11 lead changes, but the Warriors took the lead for good in the final 17 seconds of the third quarter. A layup from Jalen McCoy and then a 3-pointer from Matthews at the buzzer turned a 51-51 tie into a 56-51 deficit for the Saints.
The Saints kept fighting though. Evan DiLeonardi's ability to penetrate and either finish with driving layups or dish to JT Ford, Justin Hardy and Benjamin Talarczyk allowed the Saints to answer. The problem was they couldn't come up with enough defensive stops.
“The key was we let Rose and (Matthews) get too many good looks,” Woods said. “And on our end, the ones (shots) we missed in the second half, there were a lot of layups. Contact or not, those are probably fouls they're not going to call in that type of game. We didn't finish with contact and that was big too.”
The quickness of the Warriors presented problems for the Saints especially because Rose and Matthews were formidable threats from beyond the arc and in aggressively attacking the hoop.
“They were taking it to the basket and we were slow with rotating and not where we needed to be,” DiLeonardi said. “That's just team defense and we need to help each other out better and protect the basket better.”
Ford led a balanced attack for the Saints with 16 points. Talarczyk (15), DeLeonardi (14) and Hardy (13) also had big offensive games while Zach Hondlik had a game-high 9 rebounds.
The Saints won the rebounding battle 31-22 but lost for the first time this season when doing so.
“We're not going to see a team as good as Crete-Monee in a while and we were right there,” Woods said. “Give us another month of practice and three more healthy guys and I think we'll be right back up there.”