Frericks, Cary-Grove spoil Burlington Central's FVC debut

Beau Frericks welcomed the Burlington Central boys basketball team to the neighborhood Wednesday.

The Cary-Grove senior guard led all scorers with 27 points and the Trojans limited the visiting Rockets to 4 fourth-quarter points to spoil Central's Fox Valley Conference debut with a 53-38 win.

Frericks, Cary-Grove's leading scorer a year ago, made 7 of 12 field goal attempts, 4 of 7 from 3-point range.

"It's just fun playing in front of our crowd," Frericks said after the first home game for Cary-Grove (4-1, 1-0). "It was fun being back out here. I like this gym."

The Trojans jumped to an 18-10 lead after one quarter, fueled by 10 points from Frericks.

Burlington Central (4-1, 0-1), fresh off a Thanksgiving tournament win at Sycamore, committed 6 first-quarter turnovers but soon settled down. The Rockets used a 9-2 run to draw within a point and twice kept it a 1-point game on buckets by 6-6 senior Josh Hudgens. He scored 8 of his team-high 14 points in the second quarter.

Central was within 28-23 at the half after shooting 10 of 20 from the field. Then the bottom fell out. The Rockets made only 3 of 20 second-half attempts. The Trojans led 42-34 heading to the fourth quarter, but Central was unable to manage a field goal in 7 tries.

"We just missed a lot of good quality shots," Central coach Brett Porto said. "Every time I thought we could have inched ahead and taken a lead, especially late first half, we just couldn't capitalize on some of the quality looks that we got."

The silver lining? Central held the Trojans to 41-percent shooting from the field (16 of 39).

"I'm not upset with our defense at all," Porto said. "I thought we played them pretty well. We learned some things tonight about how we'll defend them the next time."

Frank Jakubicek finished with 12 points and 7 rebounds for Cary-Grove, which hosts Huntley on Friday.

Jake Lenschow contributed 8 points and sophomores Carson Seyller and Zac Schmidt each added 5 points for Central.