North Central youngsters overwhelm Elmhurst

Slowly but surely North Central College’s youngsters are growing up.

And for one night, at least, freshman Landon Gamble looked like a man among boys.

Gamble poured in a season-best 25 points and the Cardinals routed Elmhurst 76-58 on Wednesday in Naperville.

“He’s a tough matchup,” said coach Todd Raridon, who earned his 100th victory at North Central. “He’s just been continuing to improve at the college level, and as a freshman we’re excited to have him the next four years. He’s young, he’s going to make mistakes, but tonight we got him the basketball and he scored.”

The Cardinals (9-9, 5-2 CCIW) started two freshmen and a sophomore and brought three more freshmen off the bench for key playing time.

“They’re doing a nice job,” Raridon said. “And they’re improving every game. We had a slow start to the season and they’re just continuing to improve, and that’s all you want as a coach.”

North Central scored the game’s first nine points and quickly led 14-4 after sophomore Derek Raridon’s 3-pointer. By the 12-minute mark it was 23-8 after Brian Evans (Glenbard North) scored on a fastbreak layup. Evans was the only Cardinals senior to see significant minutes.

The Cardinals took a 45-27 lead into the locker room at halftime and led by as much as 21 points early in the second half. Elmhurst cut the margin to 11 on James Robertson’s 3-pointer with 10:03 to play, but Cardinals freshmen scored the next 6 points, and by the four-minute mark the lead was 20 again.

“Defensively, I thought we had to play great ‘D’, and we had control of the glass for the most part,” coach Raridon said. “We kept them to one shot. Offensively, you look at the first half, we had 12 assists for 15 total baskets made. So we were passing the ball around, moving the ball and getting good looks at the basket.”

“We had great, great ball movement during the game,” Gamble said. “Once we move the ball around it opens it up a lot for everybody. It got me open shots, and I was able to capitalize off of it.”

Derek Raridon (Neuqua Valley) added 13 points, freshman C.J. Goldthree and junior Kevin Gillespie each scored 11, and Evans finished with 10 points.

D’Ante Foster led Elmhurst (7-11, 2-5) with 17 points.