It all adds up for Adduci, St. Charles East
Dominic Adduci is quickly settling in as a varsity basketball player at St. Charles East.
Adduci, a sophomore transfer from Wheaton Academy, scored a season-high 25 points to help lead the Saints (5-2, 3-0) to a 56-43 Upstate Eight Conference River Division victory over Geneva (3-4, 2-1) Saturday night in St. Charles.
“I’m not a guy who really likes to take all the shots,” said Adduci, who canned 4 of the Saints’ seven 3-pointers. “But I’ll go in as hard as possible when my team needs it.”
Adduci opened the game by hitting back-to-back 3-pointers, and teammates Dom Urso and Kendall Stephens (7 points) also added 3-pointers in the opening quarter as the Saints built a 15-6 lead.
“I felt great coming right out of the tip,” said Adduci, who added 6 steals.
Geneva, which trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half, used some long-range shooting of its own to fight back in the third quarter.
John Swiderski hit a 3-pointer from the corner, and Ryan Willing’s 3-pointer from the top of the key a few minutes later trimmed the Saints’ lead to 29-26 with 2:42 remaining in the third quarter.
“We made a great run at them in that third (quarter) but that’s where the wheels came off right there,” said Vikings coach Phil Ralston.
The last two minutes of the third quarter couldn’t have gone much better for the Saints, who won their fourth straight game.
After Michael Woods split a pair of free throws, senior guard Charlie Fisher converted a 3-point play on a hard drive to the basket before Adduci’s 3-pointer and 12-foot bank-in jumper upped the Saints’ lead to 38-26.
The 9-0 run was fueled by the Saints’ pressure defense, which forced turnovers on 3 consecutive Viking possessions.
“Our defense, I think it’s been great all year,” said Saints coach Patrick Woods. “We’re holding people to 44 (points). I thought we had a good game plan going in. Geneva loves to run the swing offense and run clock. We wanted to control the tempo more and I think we did a good job of that tonight.
“We were doubling off the right people,” added Woods. “I thought our traps were really good on the ball. And our rotation off the back was a lot better.”
The Saints were also effective at taking the ball out of the hands of Geneva senior guard Ryan Willing.
Willing, who poured in a career-high 23 points in the Vikings’ win over Streamwood earlier in the week, was held to 7 points on just 3 field-goal attempts.
“Charlie was phenomenal,” Woods said of Fisher, who drew the primary defensive assignment on Willing. “He locked that kid down defensively.”
Fisher also chipped in at the offensive end, scoring 10 points on perfect 3-of-3 shooting from both the field and the free-throw line.
“I’m not an offensive scorer so I pride myself on the defensive end and hitting free throws,” said Fisher, who added 4 assists and 3 steals. “Shutting him (Willing) down – that was my main goal for this game.”
Brendan Leahy scored a team-high 8 points for the Vikings, who were unable to overcome shaky ball-handling and poor decision-making.
“We just did not do a good enough job of handling their pressure and getting into our offense,” said Ralston, whose team committed 23 turnovers. “That might have been the single, number one key to the game.
“That was about as good of defensive pressure as I’ve seen St. Charles East play this season,” added Ralston. “They did a nice job of running some run-and-jump traps on us.
“We don’t have the firepower that St. Charles East does. We really have to make sure we’re running our offense as good as we possibly can in order for us to be able to compete with them.”