Naperville Central comes on strong against Glenbard North
Some people have a favorite time of day. For the Naperville Central girls basketball team, it’s becoming the second half of their games.
It happened again Thursday night on the Redhawks’ home court when Naperville Central trailed 20-18 at intermission, but turned on the afterburners, outscoring Glenbard North 35-18 in the final two quarters to win the both teams’ first DuPage Valley Conference game of 2012, 53-38.
As for Thursday night, Redhawks coach Andy Nussbaum refused to use not having played in a week as an excuse for Naperville Central’s blahs in the first half.
“So many games, we’ve started out slow and I don’t know why. Maybe we don’t warm up right. But we were much better the second half on both ends of the court,” he said.
A perfect remedy for what ails a basketball team is the 3-point basket, and Naperville Central (9-7, 3-2) was boosted by hitting three of them during the third quarter, including two from Jill D’Amico, who scored a game-high 15 points.
Her first, with 3:25 left, gave the Redhawks a 28-27 advantage and Naperville Central never trailed again. Teammate Jamie Cuny followed with a steal and a layup, and then D’Amico closed out the quarter’s scoring with another 3 and the Redhawks led 33-27 after 24 minutes. The Panthers (8-8, 2-2) cut the advantage to six with just less than four minutes left in the game, but Naperville Central sank 9-of-12 free throws in the final quarter to easily cruise to a double-digit victory.
Emma Donahue followed on the Redhawks stat sheet with 14 points, including 8-of-8 shooting from the free-throw line. She and teammate Victoria Trowbridge each had 8 rebounds.
Donahue was honored before the contest for scoring her 1,000th point during the Dec. 3 game against Waubonsie Valley. Since then she has moved from 10th to ninth on the Naperville Central career scoring list. She’s the fifth 1,000-point scorer during Nussbaum’s 23-year tenure and 10th in school history.
“It feels real good. It’s not really sunk in,” Donahue said. “I can’t thank my teammates enough. They gave me the ball.”
Glenbard North was led by Brianna Harn’s 14 points and Teddi Govedarica’s 9.
“We’re not real deep on the bench and conditioning is factor coming off the break (the Panthers had not played in a week),” Panthers coach John Chamberlain said. “And we tend to go flat when we lose the lead.”
Two more big tests await Glenbard North. The Panthers host Wheaton Warrenville South at 3 p.m. Saturday and host Naperville North a week later.
“We want to run our sets, play defense the way we want to play and see how we match up against them and hopefully have a better second half (of the DVC season) with more practice,” Chamberlain said.
The Redhawks are back on their court at 3 p.m. Saturday against Wheaton North and are ready to face the brunt of their league schedule.
“As a program, we have always had the goal to win conference. But there are so many good teams,” Nussbaum said. “There’s a long way to go. It’s a cliche, but we are going to take it one game at a time.”
Donahue said Naperville Central’s focus will go a long way in determining its DVC fate.
“We need to play every possession like it’s our last,” she said.