St. Charles North pulls away from Wauconda

His team wasn't scoring, nor responding well to its noon tipoff against Wauconda, so during a late third-quarter timeout, coach Tom Poulin pulled four of his St. Charles North players.

The guy he left in the basketball game was the one playing ... defense.

Take a bow, Beau Blakeley.

"We were playing a little too relaxed," said Blakeley, a senior guard. "I was trying to do what I could defensively, trying to get after the ball a little bit."

Blakeley did, validating Poulin's decision to leave him on the court by finishing with 4 steals to go along with 9 points, as St. Charles pulled away to win 58-47 Monday and improve to 2-0 in the Jacobs Holiday Classic in Algonquin.

"We just got to get after it more on the defensive end," Blakeley said. "We can't let a team like that hang around with us."

While St. Charles North, the tournament runner-up the last two years, improved to 7-5, Wauconda fell to 3-8 (0-2 at Jacobs) with its fifth straight loss. The Bulldogs committed 18 turnovers.

"We've been starting off real slow in this tournament," said forward Eric Hartnett, who led Wauconda with a game-high 18 points, despite getting a bloody nose thanks to an errant elbow. "I guess in that fourth quarter it started to slip away. Turnovers have been our big thing these past two years. We've probably been (averaging) upward of 20 turnovers per game and that's just not where we need to be."

A Jeremy Powell layup in transition off a missed North Stars free throw had Wauconda within 31-28 with a minute to go in the third quarter. But after Poulin's pep talk, Ryan Brown put back his own miss to put St. Charles up 33-28 entering the fourth.

The North Stars then opened the fourth with a layup by Josh Mikes (team-high 13 points) and a steal and layup by Chris Conrad. The lead eventually swelled to 15 points on another Brown basket, capping a 20-8 run.

"I thought that was the one stretch in the game where we played with some passion," Poulin said. "I guess it's somewhat understandable after a day off, on a Monday morning, to come out here and kind of have a low-energy level. But at some point somebody on the team has to wake you up. It can't always be the coach.

"We were looking for some guys to step up and say, 'That's not what St. Charles North basketball is all about.' "

Kyle Nelson added 10 points and 10 rebounds for the North Stars. Brown and Scott Hedges came off the bench to add 7 and 6 points, respectively.

The North Stars' reserves have played well in the first two games of the tournament.

"I like the fact that our bench is really contributing," Poulin said. "Our bench is stepping up and giving us some energy and solid minutes."

Sophomore guard Kyle Ryan added 12 points for Wauconda, sinking two 3-pointers.

"Offensively, we were rushing things a little bit," Bulldogs coach Scott Luetschwager said.

"We weren't getting quite to the spots we needed to be."