Slamming on Senior Night

Editor's note: The following was first published Feb. 23. 2005

It was Senior Night for Batavia as it took on Glenbard South in Suburban Prairie North Conference play, but one would have never known that from the chants of, "He's a freshman" coming from the home crowd.

Freshman guard Nick Fruendt brought the crowd to their feet with an emphatic one-hand dunk for two of his 16 points as the Bulldogs defeated the Raiders 63-53.

"That was awesome," Fruendt said. "I had some extra adrenaline, I was loving tonight because I knew it would be the last night for the home crowd and this is a great tribute to the seniors. The whole year they have been great, especially to me, so we came out and gave it all we had for them."

There was also a ceremony honoring Batavia coach Jim Roberts for his 20 years as head coach prior to the game.

"I'm humbled by the presentation on my behalf and by the number of former players that came back," Roberts said. "I'm very happy for our seniors to be in a situation that they were in tonight. I'm happy for our team to beat a team that gave us fits at Glenbard."

All of the emotion prior to the game seemed to give Batavia (14-11, 5-5) a burst of energy right from tip-off. Junior guard Steve Ideran hit an early 3-pointer and the Bulldogs had a 10-4 lead after just two minutes of play.

Both teams started the second half slowly and exchanged turnovers but then Fruendt ignited the crowd with his dunk and followed that up with an off-handed floater in the lane to push the lead to 53-35 with just over one minute remaining in the third quarter.

Mitchell helped seal the victory for the Bulldogs, scoring 6 of his team-high 17 points down the stretch. Scalcucci was the model of consistency, scoring four points in every quarter to join Fruendt with 16 points.

"It was a great team effort," Mitchell said. "It was senior night, everybody was fired up and came to play.