Nelson, St. Charles N. overpower Streamwood
Among the people in the stands at St. Charles North Wednesday night for the North Stars’ Upstate Eight Conference River Division clash with Streamwood was an assistant coach from West Point taking a close look at senior center Kyle Nelson.
As he has all year, Nelson made quite an impression, leading St. Charles North with 22 points on 11-of-16 shooting from the field in the North Stars’ 57-43 victory.
Nelson also grabbed 7 rebounds and blocked 4 shots in pushing St. Charles North (11-12, 7-2) a game ahead of Elgin and Geneva (both 5-2) in the River standings. The North Stars have won four straight.
“I thought about it at the beginning but once you get playing it’s basketball and you get back to what you know,” said Nelson, also being recruited hard by Lewis University.
“We played our game tonight and everyone was loose and having a good time and sharing the ball and getting easy baskets for the most part. I didn’t really think about it (the West Point coach) much.”
Nelson said he enjoyed the matchup against Streamwood’s 6-9 Zach Harris who grabbed a game-high 9 rebounds.
“I prefer to play against someone my size than someone who is little and maybe quicker than me or I lose focus and not respect him,” Nelson said. “Playing against a bigger guy is more of a challenge and gets me more focused into the game defensively and offensively.”
Nelson and his teammates made quick work of the Sabres in a swift game that ended at 8:19 p.m., played in barely over an hour. The North Stars made just 1 free throw in the game — their final point of the night by Zach Kirby. The teams combined for 10 free-throw attempts.
“It just flew by,” Nelson said. “We finally took care of business and got the whole bench in. That was nice.”
Streamwood (4-18, 1-9) lost for the second time in two nights to a St. Charles school having fallen 66-55 to St. Charles East in a makeup Tuesday.
The Sabres scored the first four points on buckets by Jacob Siewert and Brandon Larkin-Guifoyle. Tony Neari’s 3 finally got the North Stars on the board, and sophomore Alec Goetz followed with a steal he took in for a layup and a 5-4 lead the North Stars never relinquished.
Nelson took over late in the first quarter scoring the North Stars’ final 8 points, his last two baskets assisted by Quinten Payne for a 13-8 lead.
The North Stars went ahead 31-19 at halftime by hitting 8 of 13 shots in the second quarter including the first of two breakaway jams from Payne.
“I thought we did a god job using our defense to generate a little of offense,” North Stars coach Tom Poulin said. “We wanted to attack before they could set up the zone.”
The North Stars outscored the Sabres 12-2 to open the second half and go up by 22 — 10 of those points coming from the Nelson-Payne duo. The closest the Sabres got the rest of the night was the final score when Kyle Strong swished a 3 at the buzzer.
“Out of a 32-minute game we probably played 22 minutes of good basketball,” Streamwood coach Tim Jones said. “It’s those 10 minutes we have that we’re not playing very good basketball and we put ourselves in a hole. The first three minutes of the third quarter we didn’t play very well.”
Larkin-Guifoyle led Streamwood with 12 points, Siewert had 10 and Harris and Brent Kiesel both finished with 8.
Ten players scored for the North Stars. The Loyola commit Payne followed Nelson with 11 points plus 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals.
Payne did leave the gym with an ice pack on his right hand the result of one of the several times he found himself at the rim either dunking, trying to dunk or reaching for a slightly overthrown alley-oop.
Poulin said the injury isn’t serious which is a good thing for the North Stars with Geneva waiting Friday.
It’s the first of two games left against the Vikings with keeping pace with Elgin in River race on the line for both teams.
“A lot of us have been playing against Geneva together since fifth grade,” Nelson said. “We know them very well as well as they know us. It’s going to be a dogfight.”
“We can’t lose any more conference games if we want to reach our goal,” Poulin said. “Geneva at home with the system they run they are one of the toughest challenges you face.”