Coach Pete Kramer will hammer the point home to his team until he gets red in the face.
At 6-foot-8 and 225 pounds, senior Ben Wolf provides quite the security blanket inside for Naperville Central.
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And he needs to touch the ball as much as he can.
“I think it really comes down to Ben letting the game come to him,” Kramer said. “We run some stuff for him early and sometimes it doesn’t work out. We just (have) to let it go and not get frustrated and commit a silly foul or whatever else — but let the game come to him. I think he’s learning that. It’s part of a maturing thing as a player. He knows what he means to us.”
In last week’s Chuck Dayton Holiday Classic at DeKalb, Wolf averaged 12 points on the way to leading the Redhawks (10-2) to the title and earning MVP honors.
Frustrated by the lack of touches Wolf had in a Dec. 15 loss to Waubonsie Valley, Kramer saw his Northern Michigan-bound center get on track in a big way.
In three of the four games at the tournament, Wolf ended up in double figures, highlighted by 22 points in a 63-46 victory over West Chicago.
“I thought the ball movement was much better,” Kramer said. “We had a lot of different kids score and knock down threes because the ball was moving, it wasn’t sitting in one person’s hands. And I think that’s a big part of what we do.”
Titles over Thanksgiving at Buffalo Grove and over Christmas at DeKalb have Naperville Central thinking big as the calendar has flipped to 2018.
The Redhawks already have matched the 10 victories they had all last season. They host Wheaton Warrenville South on Friday and play at Naperville North on Jan 12 in a pair of important DuPage Valley tests.
“I’d say the biggest difference between last year and this year is we just have more scorers on the floor,” Kramer said. “We have eight or nine kids who can put the ball in the basket. That makes a huge difference.”
Huskies rebound: It didn’t take Naperville North very long to put its first loss (54-49 to Batavia on Dec. 28) in the rear-view mirror.
The Huskies (11-1) bounced back from that quarterfinal defeat at York’s Jack Tosh Holiday Classic. They followed it up by routing St. Laurence 85-52, with four players scoring in double figures.
Senior forward Chris Johnson earned all-tournament honors after averaging 11.3 points and 6.3 rebounds.
“We obviously didn’t want to lose,” Johnson said. “We felt the York tournament was a big goal for us this year. We really wanted to go far in it. It hit us hard. Especially because it was our first loss, it hit a little bit harder.
“But we took it and we turned it as a learning experience and kept going. We came back strong and that was really good to see.”
Naperville North resumes DVC play with road games against Glenbard North on Friday and Neuqua Valley on Saturday.
Wildcats gaining traction: Three wins at East Aurora over the Christmas break figures to give Neuqua Valley some much-needed confidence.
The Wildcats (5-8) nearly tripled their win total coming into the tournament before losing to Oswego East in the championship game.
Much has been placed on the shoulders of senior guard Noah Herdman and he led the way by averaging 14.5 points in the four games.
On the year, the three-sport star is scoring 10.9 points a game.
Freshman guard John Poulakidas recorded a pair of double-digit scoring games — 14 points against Argo and 11 points against Oswego East.
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Blake Baumgartner is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun