St. Charles North falls at Neuqua Valley
Neuqua Valley's senior night festivities included a salute to athletic director Barb Barrows, who has presided over 100 Upstate Eight Conference titles spanning the Naperville school's dozen years.
No. 101 looks pretty good from here.
The Wildcats boys basketball team, which entered Friday with a 2-game lead over East Aurora and Bartlett with two conference games left, clinched its third straight UEC title, beating a solid St. Charles North team handily, 85-54.
"We told the guys, St. Charles North's a very good team, and we really had a nice game. We played excellent. We played great," said Neuqua Valley coach Todd Sutton.
Neuqua Valley (24-1, 9-0) shot 36 of 64 (56 percent) from the floor and each of the 12 Wildcats who got in scored. Center Kareem Amedu tied St. Charles North's Josh Mikes for game honors with 17 points, while Neuqua's Dwayne Evans scored 15 with 4 steals and guard Rahjan Muhammad added 12 points and 5 assists.
St. Charles North (16-11, 6-4) didn't like much after the first quarter, which Neuqua closed on a 6-0 run to take a 22-15 lead into the second.
"We felt like we could match up with them," North Stars coach Tom Poulin said. "We weren't as physical as we wanted to be early on. We felt like they may have a little more athleticism across the front line but we could be more physical... Didn't see that tonight."
He did see 6-foot-7 Ryan Brown, headed to Northern Illinois as a preferred football walk-on, display nice first-quarter touch around the net for 6 of his 14 points, and center Kyle Nelson scored half his 10 points in that opening quarter.
Neuqua then went inside to Amedu and Mgbada scored twice on putbacks in the second quarter, while the North Stars shot just 2 for 11 from the field. Neuqua led 38-23 at halftime and built its lead from there.
"They're a very athletic team, one of the best in the state," Brown said. "We just didn't play our best tonight, didn't play with a lot of energy. We kind of stepped back on our heels after that first quarter."