Boys basketball: Luca Carbonaro leads Wheaton Warrenville South past Wheaton North

WHEATON – As the only returning starter for his team, Luca Carbonaro is going to be asked to do a lot this winter.

On Dec. 15, the Wheaton Warrenville South junior certainly was up to the task. And so were his teammates.

With Carbonaro’s game-high 20 points leading the way, the Tigers almost led from start to finish in a 53-38 DuKane Conference win over Wheaton North.

WWS (6-3, 3-1) jumped out to a 12-2 lead and never looked back and now has won six of its last seven contests after dropping the first two games of the season.

“I thought we cleared the boards really well,” said Carbonaro, who added six assists and two steals while making four 3-pointers. “Brady (Goken) did a great job on the glass. Especially toward the end, we stayed under control breaking their press and we also did a good job shooting the 3, not being too indecisive, just making the right plays. And defensively, we did our thing. It was better tonight.

“This team gets better every day. It’s built in practice, that’s 80% of it. We don’t have a guy that is 6-foot-8 this year, but if we play to the best of our abilities and play together, we will be fine.”

Carbonaro hit back-to-back 3-pointers as the margin swelled to 18-5 in the second quarter. Wheaton North (5-4, 2-2) got the deficit to within four in the third quarter before the Tigers closed out the period on a 12-5 run, punctuated by a Carbonaro dunk. Max O’Connell and Goken also reached double figures with 10 points apiece. Joe Preede finished with nine points.

“We focused on getting stops and then getting open shots,” O’Connell said. “We started out really well defensively. We held them to five points in that first quarter.

“We didn’t get off to a good start (losses to Rolling Meadows and Evanston at the Fenton tournament) but we’ve picked it up. We had a couple of hard practices and now we are in a groove. We have started to do what we need to do, play well defensively, play aggressively, share the ball.”

The Tigers forced 14 turnovers and held the Falcons to four field goals in the opening half.

“We knew they would pressure us from the get-go,” WWS longtime assistant coach Matt Stellwagen said. “Their pressure is something you have to deal with or it will deal with you. To our kids’ credit, they did a nice job with that. And we count on Luca to have big games and he never lets us down.

“It’s been a little bit building of momentum here as these guys get more minutes together and figure things out.”

Hudson Parker topped Wheaton North with 12 points and three steals. Caleb Schauer had nine points, Jack Speers added eight points and Connor Speers contributed six. The Falcons used a 9-4 spurt out of halftime to close the gap to 27-23 but would get no closer.

“We’ve kind of had trouble with slow starts,” Wheaton North coach Dave Brackmann said. “Then we usually play more aggressively and get back into games and that is what happened tonight. We just couldn’t get over the hump. We were right there and then it kind of snowballed at the end. We talked about it (after the game) and I’m excited to see their response. Obviously it’s super disappointing. It’s tough to win here. You have to play well and we didn’t do a lot of things well tonight.

“We’ve been up and down. We are trying to put together complete games. At times we look like a really good team and other times we don’t. We have to be more consistent.”