It didn’t matter for St. Charles East on Tuesday whether it was junior forward Justin Hardy or lower-profile players.
It was one of those nights when the 3-pointers dropped through for almost anyone against rival St. Charles North.
Hardy hit three 3-pointers and scored a team-high 16 points, while teammates Charles Murphy and Alec Champine also hit three 3-pointers each in a 67-57 Upstate Eight River victory at St. Charles North.
“Every time we could get someone into the lane, the defense would collapse and we’d kick out to our shooters in the corners,” Hardy said.
St. Charles East (14-7, 6-2) matched a season high with 12 3-pointers, and did it all in three quarters to cruise to its second win in three matchups with St. Charles North (13-5, 5-3). It left the Saints as the closest challengers to unbeaten Geneva, two games behind in the conference race.
“We got a lot of extra shots up this week in practice,” Hardy said. “It showed tonight.
“They were leaving me open from three. I couldn’t get much inside, but on every open three I felt confident and I just let it fly.”
The 6-foot-5 Hardy leads the Saints with a 21.1-point average. St. Charles East also had 15 points and two 3-pointers by senior guard Zach Mitchell. The real surprises were Murphy and Champine.
Before Tuesday, Champine had only two 3-pointers on the season. Murphy wasn’t even on varsity for the first two games against St. Charles North — or even in Illinois last season.
“I moved here during the summer from (Mandeville) Louisiana and started off with the sophomore team,” Murphy said. “I was playing pretty good so they brought me up during Christmastime and I got adapted to it pretty good.”
Murphy hit all three of his 3-pointers in the first half as the Saints built a 32-23 halftime lead. Champine widened the lead by making his threes during a 1:45 span in the third quarter. They were part of a 12-2 run that put the Saints up 47-29.
“We just kept moving the ball around,” Murphy said. “That’s what coach’s mentality is, to just keep passing the ball to get even better looks. That’s what we kept executing.”
St. Charles East shot 58 percent for the second and third quarters (14-for-24). They went 12-for-23 on 3-pointers in the first three quarters.
“They got us scrambling and that’s their game,” St. Charles North coach Tom Poulin said.
St. Charles North center Kyle King scored 17 points and teammate Anthony Delisi had 16. But the North Stars struggled almost as much offensively as defensively.
“They beat us soundly,” Poulin said. “They defended harder, they played smarter, they shared the ball better.
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“I’m very disappointed in our defense. And we made an awful lot of mistakes not even related to game plan, just fundamental man-to-man defense.”
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