Perhaps above all else, Neuqua Valley prides itself on what it does in the postseason on an annual basis.
But that doesn’t mean division or conference titles aren’t exactly looked at any differently either for Todd Sutton and his program.
Entering this season as two-time defending Upstate Eight Valley champions, Neuqua Valley’s quest to three-peat may have just received a huge boost towards that end six days before Christmas.
With perennial state power West Aurora in town for the first of two meetings during the only year it’ll be conference foes, Neuqua Valley showed that the road towards the UEC Valley title still may go through south Naperville.
Senior forward Connor Raridon’s rebound and putback of a Zac Lendino free throw with 64 seconds left gave Neuqua Valley the lead for good as it registered a come-from-behind, 52-47 victory over West Aurora on Friday.
The North Central College-bound Raridon tallied a game-high 20 points while pulling down six rebounds to help lead the way for the Wildcats.
“We did a cross on our free-throw boxout and so I got picked from Jacob Eminger and I was just open and I put it back in,” he said of the rebound and putback on the Lendino miss that gave the Wildcats a 48-46 lead with 1:04 to play.
[shareprints gallery_id=”1144″ gallery_type=”squares” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”small” image_padding=”3″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”false” lightbox_type=”slide” captions=”true” comments=”true” sharing=”true”]Down as by many as 13 points in the first half while only shooting 2-of-16 from three as a team for the game, Neuqua Valley (8-1, 4-1) battled back throughout by doing what it’s been doing all year: hound the glass.
Dominating the Blackhawks on the glass to the tune of 35-19, senior forward Jacob Eminger paced the Wildcats’ rebounding assault by corralling 14 rebounds to go along with his 14 points.
“Last Friday (at Bartlett), we got beat on the boards. That’s how you lose. Our boards were awesome (Friday night),” Sutton said. “Jacob Eminger, Zac Lendino, Connor—oh, my gosh! We were on offensive and defensive boards. They were fantastic.”
The Wildcats took their first lead of the game at 42-41 with just over five minutes to go in the game on a Raridon bucket, which set off a game-ending sequence that saw the game tied once and the lead exchange hands three times.
With his team down by a point with just over a minute to play, Demond George, who was limited to just six points by the West Aurora defense, stole the ball at midcourt from Matthew Dunn and got too far underneath the basket to get a good look.
From there, Lendino’s rebound of a George miss, ability to get fouled and Raridon’s rebound and putback of Lendino’s second free throw put the Wildcats in control for good.
“I’m yelling, ‘foul!’ He’s saying, ‘steal,’” Sutton said. “I’m going to start listening to him a little bit more. What a great play (from George).”
Sutton’s biggest worry played out in the game’s first 2:10 as West Aurora blitzed the Wildcats with a quick 9-2 lead as Roland Griffin and Marquis Howard combined for seven of its first nine points of the game.
The Illinois State-bound Griffin recorded 13 points in the first half that saw the Blackhawks (5-4, 3-2) take a 29-23 lead into halftime.
But Griffin would be put on lockdown for much of the second half as Raridon, Eminger and crew held him to just four points and one field goal, a three-pointer from the left wing in Raridon’s face with three minutes left in regulation that gave the Blackhawks a 46-43 lead, in the second half.
“The second half, they really locked down on us and then they were just closing out on shooters, moving their feet well and they weren’t fouling either,” Griffin said. “So it was great D by them. I’ll give it to them.”
Griffin, a 6-foot-6, 198-pound forward, led West Aurora with a team-high 17 points while Howard ended up with 10 as it was held to its season low of 47 points.
With Saturday’s game at Waubonsie Valley next on the docket for the Wildcats, trying to reclaim their shooting stroke from distance will be key moving forward.
But the ability to take down a program as quality as the one Gordie Kerkman has built at West Aurora by doing the little things right is a testament to the group Sutton has to work with.
“We just had to find other ways to score. If it’s not going in from three, you got to adjust and get to the free throw line or get an easy jumper,” Raridon said. “With our defense being as good as it was (Friday) night for how many weapons they have, it was a good thing.”
