Defense keys Lake Park win against St. Charles East
St. Charles East didn’t need a scouting report to know Lake Park’s Dominique “Domo” Spencer can score in bunches.
The Saints learned Wednesday night that the 6-foot-4 senior is a pretty good defender also.
Spencer held Purdue-bound St. Charles East junior Kendall Stephens to just 3 points and the Lancers won their Upstate Eight Conference crossover game 56-48 in Roselle.
“Basically, coach has been pushing me, so I tried to respond and do my best there,” Spencer said. “A pretty good job. For someone who’s going to Purdue, only 3 points, that’s a pretty good job.”
“Our defense is really what’s been pulling us all year and even tonight,” Lake Park coach Josh Virostko said. “Dominique Spencer guarded the Stephens kid all game. The first half I don’t think he had a point. That’s a really good accomplishment to guard a kid like that. And I thought we really frustrated them on the defensive end. That created our offense.”
St. Charles East got 14 points from Dominic Adduci, 11 from Charlie Fisher and 10 from Johnny Hondlik, but none of those points came easy. The Saints made just 14 of 50 shots from the floor. In being held well below his average of 19 points a game, Stephens made just 1 of 10 shots.
“It was more shot selection than anything,” coach Patrick Woods said of his Saints. “I thought when we worked the ball around we got the looks we wanted and the shots we wanted. We got to the free-throw line. When we’re going one pass and a bad shot, I don’t mind if certain players on the team that are capable of it don’t pass when they’re open. By all means, take it. But we just didn’t have that kind of decision-making offensively.”
Spencer did well on offense also, finishing with 21 points.
“He’s good,” Woods said. “He’s good. I don’t think we underestimated him. It’s just hard when you’re trying to guard the bigs inside, and you’ve got to stay on him, the kid outside, they’ve got some nice pieces. They do a nice job of playing together. He’s tough, he’s a competitor. He battled. I thought he did a nice job defensively on Kendall. He’s a heck of a player.”
Dave Prentis added 11 points for Lake Park (11-4), hitting three 3-pointers.
“Prentis can shoot it,” Virostko said of his 40 percent 3-point shooter, “and that’s something he’s done all year. He’s our most consistent outside shooter, and he’s really worked on it. He shot 1,000 shots over the summer, and he’s paid the dividends from it this season.”
The Lancers’ Zach Wagner ruled the boards with 10 rebounds to go with his 6 points.
Lake Park took a 10-8 lead after the first quarter and never trailed again, expanding the lead to 33-22 at halftime. The lead peaked at 14 points midway through the third quarter, but St. Charles East held tough, getting as close 5 late in the third.
“We knew they were going to have a run, so we just decided to take their run and have to make a run ourselves,” Spencer said.
“We have a tendency to start clock-watching,” Virostko said. “We’ve gotten big leads before, and we’ve had a couple of games where we let them come back to beat us. We’ve got to do a better job of just staying in the moment and focusing on each play.”