St. Charles North shares ball, rolls over Streamwood

In the first two minutes after the opening tipoff of their Upstate Eight game against visiting Streamwood, the North Stars scored by attacking the basket, hitting a 3-pointer, and perfectly executing a fastbreak.

And they were just getting started.

St. Charles North dominated every aspect of the game, and cruised to a 70-48 win.

"That was a good old fashioned butt-kicking," Streamwood coach Tim Jones said. "They were more physical than us, and we were intimidated by their physical play."

It began with Chris Conrad feeding Kyle Nelson inside, just 15 seconds into the game. Then the St. Charles North defense and running game took over. And finally, it began raining 3s as Quinten Payne and Conrad connected from long distance as part of a 9-0 run.

"Our coach stresses that if get the ball inside, our outside shots will be there," Conrad said. "We've been waiting to play like this the whole season. We were flowing tonight, and this is the right time of the season to start getting it together the way we are."

When Payne capped the first quarter scoring with a crowd-energizing dunk, he staked the North Stars to an 18-5 lead, and it seemed as though they could do no wrong.

"We've done that before, but then let teams work their way back into it," St. Charles North coach Tom Poulin said. "The guys tonight bought into playing defense and rebounding for 32 minutes. When that happens, we get transition looks at threes and transition baskets."

Streamwood tried to stay in the game by intensifying its defensive play and focusing on getting better looks at the hoop. But as the North Stars headed for the break with a 36-17 lead, it was becoming clear that the Sabres had no solutions to their problems.

"We wanted to move the ball around and make them play defense more than they usually have to, but it just didn't work out," Jones said.

The fact that the Sabres had been dealing with an unexpected layoff, due to bad weather and cancellations, didn't help.

"I don't want to make any excuses, or take anything away from St. Charles North, which played very well tonight, but obviously those five days off killed us," Jones said. "We were off last week because of the snowstorm, and we couldn't practice. We were playing pretty good basketball up to that point."

St. Charles North (12-10, 7-2) continued to do whatever it wanted on offense in the third quarter, turning nearly every Streamwood misstep into a fastbreak opportunity.

"We stress getting down the floor, and using our speed, and that helped us tonight," Nelson said. "We just came out here and did our thing."

Streamwood's offense finally began to get into a flow in the second half. Brent Kiesel came off the bench and nailed a pair of 3s, as the Sabres matched St. Charles North's 18-point effort in the third quarter.

"(Kiesel) is a very good shooter, and he's done that before," Jones said.

Streamwood (6-15, 2-7) continued to battle in the fourth quarter, putting together an 11-0 run, but it was too little, and much too late on this night.

"That was our best performance of team basketball this season," Poulin said. "We had 19 assists, which is by far our most this season. That's the most important stat tonight, because it means we're sharing the basketball and playing together."

Payne led all scorers with 13 points, while teammate Jason Weinzirl added 11.

Kiesel was the Sabres' top scorer with 10 points, and Bobby Post pulled down 8 boards.