Boys basketball: York’s second-half surge thwarts Glenbard North

Hunter Stepanich knew the first half of Wednesday’s Class 4A Bartlett sectional semifinal was not the usual way York plays basketball.

Despite holding a four-point lead into halftime over Glenbard North, the Dukes went into the locker room feeling like defensively they were behind.

With just a few rebounds and zero points to his name at that point, the 6-foot-8 senior knew he needed to lead the charge.

“We all talked at halftime about playing with a sense of urgency,” Stepanich said. “We gave them a lot of second-chance points with offensive rebounds. That’s not usually how we play.”

The Princeton commit came through in the second half.

Stepanich scored all 11 of his points in the second half to go along with 10 rebounds, as the second-seeded Dukes pulled away in the fourth quarter to secure a 58-44 victory over the Panthers.

“We went in and challenged our senior class and just told them that seniors lead,” Dukes coach Mike Dunn said. “What got us here has been rebounding and defense, and that’s what we did in the second half.”

With the win, the Dukes (30-4) broke the program record for wins in a season. They’ll have a chance for their first sectional title since 1982 when they face top-seeded Glenbard East in the Bartlett sectional final at 7 p.m. Friday.

York didn’t pull away until the fourth quarter. After ending the third quarter up 35-33, the Dukes went on a 15-4 run over the first 5:30 of the final quarter, which was escalated by Stepanich in the paint and a pair of 3-pointers from junior Sawyer Asgedom.

“We just started getting stops and rebounded,” Dunn said. “Asgedom hit a couple of 3-pointers in the fourth quarter that was huge. We just had a next guy up kind of deal, and that’s why we’ve been so successful.”

Joseph Lubbe led the Dukes with 15 points, with 11 of them coming in the first half. Sophomore Will O’Leary, who dealt with strep throat during the week, also added 11 points.

Stepanich led the team in the paint, putting up three blocks while also adding five offensive boards, three of which came on put-back shots.

“We call all of our bigs the ‘Wrecking Crew,’” Stepanich said. “We all practice owning the paint and we know that if we can do that, we can spread the floor for our shooters and give them the confidence that if they miss, we can get the rebound and the points still.”

That presence in the paint was a problem the Panthers (24-8) could not find an answer to late in the contest, leading to them resorting to the 3-point shot, where they were just 8 of 22 in the contest.

“I thought we got some good looks, but they were all from the perimeter,” Panthers coach Kevin Tonn said. “We didn’t really do a good job of getting the ball inside, but that’s one of their strengths defensively. And down the stretch when we tried to quicken them up, they got the ball inside to the bigs for some nice, easy buckets.”

The Panthers kept it close for the first three quarters, forcing 13 different lead changes in the contest, including after back-to-back 3-pointers from senior Matt Welch and sophomore George Schager to make it 25-23 to open the second half.

“We knew this was a team we could compete with,” Tonn said. “We lost to them by four in the regular season and it went in the same way. We just didn’t shoot particularly as good as we have in the last two games.”

Welch led the Panthers with 20 points, including five 3-pointers. The DuKane Conference Player of the Year was the only senior starter for the Panthers, who were co-conference champions this season.

“He’s such a hard worker and he sets the tone with his competitiveness and his work ethic,” Tonn said. “It sucks that all of our seniors saw the season end. They were all huge parts of our team. But I like where our program is at.”