Naperville North 50, West Chicago 32
After a season-long string of gut-wrenching losses, Naperville North's boys basketball team reacquainted itself with a comfortable victory Friday night.
The Huskies sprinted to a 10-0 lead against visiting DuPage Valley Conference foe West Chicago and led by as many as 25 points before wrapping up a 50-32 triumph.
The impetus for Naperville North's quick start was a stifling full-court trapping defense that forced the Wildcats into turnovers on six of their first seven possessions of the game. Benefiting offensively were Jake Hasse and Clint Hunter, as the duo combined for all of Naperville North's points with the Huskies (6-12, 2-5) opening a 16-4 lead after one quarter.
"We executed it well tonight and got it done defensively," said Naperville North guard Dan Hess. "Those close games were heartbreakers, but we can't think about those anymore. We have a lot of confidence in our defense right now."
On the other side it was more of the same for Wildcats coach Kevin Gimre, who has watched his young squad face a season-long losing battle against sluggish starts.
"There's no surprise, nothing secret about it -- we have to come out and handle it better, we have to be more consistent in the first four minutes," he said. "We didn't handle the trap well initially. We were slow passing to the open guy, slow rotating and those things, if you don't do them, they can hurt you."
In fact the Wildcats (1-17, 0-7) struggled at the outset of all four quarters with the team's earliest points scored in any period coming at the 4:41 mark of the fourth quarter. The Huskies took advantage of those lapses to open a 22-4 lead on the way to a 29-10 edge at the half, before scoring the first 6 points of the second half to establish the game's biggest bulge at 35-10.
Hasse paced the Huskies all night, finishing with 22 points while adding 7 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals. Hunter finished with 8 points and Joe McNicholas had 7 points and 6 rebounds off the bench.
The Wildcats actually outscored Naperville North 22-21 in the second half with guards Chad Driscoll, C.J. Opel and Tony Quarto, who combined for 14 points, providing the spark. After committing 20 turnovers in the first half, they gave it away only 7 times in the second.
"We hung in there and picked up the intensity, which was nice," Gimre said. "We did some nice things defensively, a nice job rebounding and anytime you can hold a team to 50 points, I'll take that."