Evan Nagler scored 20 points, Jake Pollack added 11, and Deerfield clinched the first supersectional championship in school history with a 51-36 victory over St. Francis on Monday night at NOW Arena in Hoffman Estates.

Deerfield will make its state debut against Kaneland in the Class 3A state semifinal at 10 a.m. Friday in Champaign.

“It’s the first time in history to be able to do this for our town with all the fans, so it’s so special,” said Pollack, a Dartmouth commit.

“It just means a lot because of how good the fans have been these last couple days,” said Nagler, a senior guard. “I don’t know if anyone was there Friday night for our sectional championship, but it was a full packed crowd and they brought us energy. Being able to return the favor to them by getting them some wins, just means a lot to us in the whole community.”

If the Warriors were nervous to take the big stage Monday, they hid it well.

They jumped out to an 18-5 lead, as Pollack bullied his way to a seven-point opening quarter.

He scored half of Deerfield’s first 14 points as St. Francis struggled to find an answer for the 6-foot-9 senior’s size.

“I had some games near the end of the regular season that maybe I wasn’t as aggressive as I like to be,” Pollack said. “It’s really been a point to me that I need to set the tone for our team of just going to the rim and being super aggressive from the jump, because when we come out and we punch a team in the mouth like that, it’s really hard to battle back.”

However, St. Francis is a battle tested group that fought its way through a grueling Chicago Catholic League Blue schedule in the regular season. The Spartans responded in the second quarter by going on a 12-0 run to make it a one-point game as the intermission approached.

“We picked up a lot of the pressure,” St. Francis coach Erin Dwyer said. “We tried to just change the tempo of the game. We felt like we could pressure them.”

Dwyer has a unique perspective on the Deerfield team, as he coaches Pollack with the Illinois Wolves during AAU play.

It looked like his team had found the answer for the Deerfield offense until Warriors sophomore Charlie Yellen laid one in before the half to end the run and give his team a 20-17 lead.

“I knew they were going to throw doubles,” Yellen said. “I knew I got to go to the rim, and it kind of gave us energy going into the second half that we needed.”

St. Francis senior Ben Whorlow was a big reason the Spartans made their underdog postseason run. As was guard Tanner Hozian. They were determined to keep the game close into the second half.

“At halftime, we talked about how we didn’t want that to be our last game,” the 6-foot-8 St. Francis forward Ben Whorlow said. “That wasn’t who we were as a team. We’re gonna fight back, and I think we did that a lot in the second half.”

Nagler and Pollack went back to work in the third, as the Warriors pushed their lead to double digits. The Spartans were never quite able to pull things back to even and their Cinderella season ends a game shy of Champaign.

“Today was a good example in the second half. They really came strong at [Pollack],” Deerfield coach Dan McKendrick said. “And just the way he keeps coming at it, doesn’t give up.”

“I went straight to the principal. I said, you earned it too,” McKendrick said jokingly. “No school Friday. Seems like a pretty obvious call.”

Another Spartans senior, Nathan Silagi, went down with a leg injury during the second quarter. He had been playing through a groin pull throughout the postseason.

“As a team, we fought through all kinds of injuries,” said Hozian, who has been playing with a broken nose since Jan 30. “Everyone’s kind of battling through everything, and I think, especially in that second quarter, you saw, like, the fight didn’t end.”

“When he went down, we all said, do it for him,” Hozian said. “He’s one of our brothers.”

While they couldn’t quite bring it home for Silagi, Dwyer is proud of the progress the group made on their way to a sectional title.

“The characteristics that they have are going to endure them for the rest of their lives, the friendships, the brotherhood that they’ve created for each other,” Dwyer said. “You can’t ask for a better group of young men.”