Boys basketball: Luke Davis, DeKalb dominate No. 8 LaSalle-Peru

DeKALB – LaSalle-Peru was undefeated, ranked and traveling with a large procession of fans.

DeKalb had Luke Davis, a double-digit win streak of its own and a raucous home crowd.

The Barbs rode a strong game from Davis to a 68-51 win over LaSalle-Peru on Tuesday in a Northern Illinois Big 12 crossover battle between the two first-place teams in each division.

Davis shot 10 of 12 for the night, including 5 of 6 in the first quarter. He finished with 20 points and six rebounds, his final points of the night an emphatic dunk with 3:21 left to push the lead for the Barbs (20-3 overall, 9-0 conference) to 61-42.

“We thought we could go inside right away, and we did,” DeKalb coach Al Biancalana said of his team’s 14th straight win. “Luke had a great start to the game. He had a great first half.”

Davis outscored the Cavaliers (17-1, 5-1) by one in the first quarter as DeKalb built a 20-9 lead. The lead was as large as 23 in the third quarter, and the Cavs got no closer than 14 in the fourth.

The Cavaliers had some injury woes in the game – they started without Christian Soderholm, then had two players hurt in the first quarter. Kobey Fusinetti returned to score nine, the second best output for LaSalle-Peru, but Ryan Atilano never returned.

"Again I thought defensively we played extremely well in the first half," Bian-
calana said. "We took away some of the things they wanted to do. Not having Soderholm hurt, because they don't play a lot of guys anyway."

Michael Pollack added 11 points and a game-high eight rebounds for DeKalb, which shot 61 percent from the floor in the game. Brady Huebbe led the Cavaliers with 15 points.

Biancalana said the team wasn’t so much focused on making a statement as keeping a perfect home record. They have one home game remaining, Feb. 26 against Yorkville.

“We kind of took it as business as usual,” Biancalana said. “Our preparation was the same. We thought there were a couple things important for us to start the game. No. 1 was to rebound, and I thought we were plus-seven at the end of the first half. They are an extremely good offensive rebounding team and we held them two offensive rebounds in the first half. We really concentrated on a couple of their players that were good scorers and did a good job of making them uncomfortable. And when we do that, we have a good effort.”