Local roundup for Friday, March 5

The DeKalb boys basketball team scored 10 points in the first 3:05 of the second half on Friday against Metea Valley, breaking open a tie game en route to an 81-69 win to claim the DuPage Valley Conference title for a second straight year.

“We’re excited,” second-year coach Mike Reynolds said. “They’re a good team with a lot of talent.”

The Barbs (16-0, 8-0) trailed after one quarter and into the second. After the game was knotted at the half, DeKalb scored the first 10 of the third to take control. Trenton Kyler had half of those en route to a 33-point performance.

“It came down to our guys’ toughness and willingness to lay it on the line every single possession,” Reynolds said. “That’s all we ask, and we knew if we continued to play fast, we’d have a shot.”

Reynolds said he figured the fast-paced game would play into the Barbs’ favor sooner or later.

“We just knew that was more our speed than theirs,” Reynolds said. “We were just hoping to continue to play fast and eventually of we can wear them down a little bit. You’re not going to win by 100, but a 10-, 12-point spurt and when they took their starters out with two, three minutes to go we were up 17 or 18.”

Reynolds also said the team was motivated from their last game at Waubonsie, a game they trailed throughout before storming back late.

“We just got up and down the floor,” Reynolds said. “We play fast and want to get up and down the floor, we were able to do that, and our guys wanted to prove the last time wasn’t a fluke. They said, you only played good for six or seven minutes. I think we proved that we’re not a fluke.”

Lane McVicar added 22 points and 12 rebounds, Martez Jackson added 12 and Tyler Westberg added 10.

Now the Barbs have three games left and a chance to finish the season undefeated.

“We haven’t really talked about it,” Reynolds said. “We’ve kind of taken it one week at a time to be real honest. Some weeks we’ve had three games. There was a week we had five. ... But we just set the goal, and next week we want to go 3-0. We have three games scheduled, we have two conference games Monday and Tuesday, and we play on Saturday pretty close by. I don’t know the name of the town but we play there. Sycamore. So we got three good games.”

Indian Creek 63, Newark 47: At Indian Creek, Drew Gaston scored 17 points and dished out five assists, Cam Russell and Brennen McNally each had a double-double, and the Timberwolves wrapped up the Little Ten Conference championship for the second year in a row.

Russell tallied 16 points and 12 rebounds, while McNally had 11 points and 10 rebounds. Davis Stryker added 11 points for the Timberwolves (14-2).

Hinckley-Big Rock 60, Serena 47: At Serena, Judson Scott scored a career-high 31 points, and the Royals held off a late rally from the hosts to win their Little Ten finale.

Ben Hintzsche chipped in eight points for HBR (9-4, 7-2).

MEN’S BASKETBALL

NIU 79, Central Michigan 74: Junior Trendon Hankerson scored a new career-high 27 points as the Northern Illinois University men’s basketball team outlasted Central Michigan, 79-74, on Friday evening at McGuirk Arena in the season finale.

 The win was the first since Jan. 16 against Akron and snapped a seven-game losing streak.

Junior Darius Beane added 16 points and senior Nathan Scott netted a season-high 13.

“I thought we were connected today, the energy was good, although we made some mistakes at the beginning and we missed some shots,” said NIU interim head coach Lamar Chapman. “The sharing of the ball was a positive. We had worked on zone, but not a lot, and I planned on using it, but not as much (as I did).

“Central (Michigan) started to figure things out (during its second half comeback) and to have those key possessions down the stretch and come out with a win was great, I thought we played well enough to win.”

NIU led by six, 72-66, after a pair of free throws by Beane with 2:37 to play, but Central Michigan answered with the next six to tie the game with a minute to go.

On the next possession, Hankerson drained a pullup jumper as the Huskies went back in front by a pair. Following a defensive stop, sophomore Tyler Cochran (Bolingbrook, Ill./Bolingbrook) muscled his way to the rim for an old-fashioned three-point play, giving NIU a 77-72 lead with 21 seconds remaining.

GIRLS BASKETBALL

DeKalb 57, Waubonsie Valley 55: Down by as much as 13, the Barbs stormed back for a road win in overtime.

Genoa-Kingston 46, Oregon 24: At Genoa-Kingston, the Cogs used an 18-2 run in the first quarter to pull away in the Big Northern Conference tournament game.

GK’s Bridget Babb led all scorers with 24 points. Lily McPherson had 12 and Delaney Hemann added five foer the Cogs, who travel to Winnebago on Saturday for a 6 p.m. tipoff.