Boys Basketball: Schaumburg’s second quarter enough to get past Wheaton North

Updated: December 28, 2011 9:35PM

Schaumburg coach Matt Walsh believed that all of his team’s games at the Hinsdale South Holiday Tournament figured to be tough.

That’s why he was pleased to see his team put together a decisive second-period run in their quarterfinal game with Wheaton North on Wednesday.

The Saxons, who edged Glenbrook South 49-46 on Tuesday, broke open a 16-16 tie by outscoring the Falcons 19-6 during the second quarter.

They added four more points at the start of the second half and that helped them to capture a 65-50 victory in Darien.

Schaumburg (8-3) advanced to Thursday’s 6:15 p.m. semifinals against Brother Rice (8-3), which won 55-48 over Highland Park.

“I thought we played really well during long stretches of the game,” Walsh said. “We got a lot of good contributions from many players. We’ve got a lot of good players and tonight they played well together.

“There’s only one ranked team in this tournament (Metea Valley) and they’re an excellent team. But every other team in this tournament is solid so you know that you’re going to get four great games here.”

The Saxons connected on 54 percent of their shots from the floor and made good on 12 of 13 free throw attempts.

Wheaton North (4-6) made half of its shots from the floor but was 5 of 14 from the free throw stripe and had 16 turnovers.

Schaumburg was led by Christian Spandiary (16 points, six rebounds), Kyle Bolger (15 points), Jimmy Lundquist (10 points) and Joe Faleni (eight points).

The Falcons, who play Highland Park on Thursday, were paced by Matt Biegalski (16 points), Andrew Zelis (15 points) and Sam Otto (12 points).

“They made that run in the second quarter and started extending their lead and we were playing catch up the whole second half,” Falcons coach Jim Nazos said. “But Schaumburg is a very good team and they do a lot of things well.

“There were periods in the middle quarters where they were more aggressive defensively than we were aggressive offensively and that kind of put us on our heels and we didn’t get the looks that we wanted to get.”

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