Naperville North comeback catches Hinsdale Central

Chris Johnson admitted to having some butterflies before his first varsity basketball game on Monday night.

But by the second half the Naperville North sophomore already looked like a seasoned veteran.

Scoring 11 of his 15 points over the final two quarters, Johnson led the Huskies to a come-from-behind 57-46 victory over Hinsdale Central as part of the Hoops for Healing Tournament.

Johnson's three-point play with 2:26 remaining broke a 43-43 tie and kicked off a closing 14-3 run for Naperville North, which trailed 28-22 at halftime.

"At the beginning I was kind of nervous, but once we had the tipoff, it kind of all went away," Johnson said. "In the first half we knew what we were doing wrong. We made some adjustments at halftime and in the second half we stopped our turnovers, we got more rebounds and we only missed one free throw."

Johnson added 12 rebounds and played strong defense against the Red Devils' 6-foot-7 Peter Blust.

"It wasn't just offensively, I thought Chris did an unbelievable job on both ends of the floor," said Naperville North coach Jeff Powers, whose team was playing without junior guard Mitch Lewis and senior forward EJ Vaughn. "To be able to handle the ball and finish as strong as he does and rebound the way he does, we have a special kid there."

Tyler Carlson also knocked down five 3-pointers for the Huskies, including a 3-pointer that gave the home team a 6-point advantage with a little more than one minute left.

"It was a good win," Powers said. "That was a very difficult game; (Hinsdale Central coach) Nick (Latorre) is one of my best friends and having to play him in the first game wasn't fun. One of us had to lose.

"One of our problems last year, I told the kids that we had to adjust better after halftime. And we did that."

Hinsdale Central, which doesn't return a single full-time starter from a year ago, seemed to be in a good position after a 19-7 spurt in the second quarter, spurred on by a pair of three-point plays from Chris Eck. The visitors extended their lead to 41-33 midway through the third on another basket by Eck but didn't score again until three minutes to go in the game.

Drew Shepherd topped the Red Devils with 12 points on four 3-pointers and Eck finished with 11.

"We had some breakdowns on defense," Latorre said. "We made a couple of bad decisions defensively and that gave them some momentum. We've got a lot of guys with zero varsity basketball experience and this was their first time in a tight game in that kind of atmosphere. It was a learning experience for a lot of the guys."