High school boys basketball: Cary-Grove tops Burlington Central as Beau Frericks scores 27

CARY – Beau Frericks welcomed the Burlington Central boys basketball team to the neighborhood Wednesday.

The Cary-Grove senior guard led all scorers with 27 points, and the Trojans limited the Rockets to four fourth-quarter points in a 53-38 victory to spoil Burlington’s Fox Valley Conference debut.

Frericks, C-G’s leading scorer last season, made 7 of 12 field goal attempts, including 4 of 7 from 3-point range.

“It’s just fun playing in front of our crowd,” Frericks said after the first home game for C-G (4-1, 1-0 FVC). “It was fun being back out here. I like this gym.”

The Trojans jumped to an 18-10 lead after one quarter, fueled by 10 points from Frericks.

Burlington (4-1, 0-1), fresh off a Thanksgiving tournament win at Sycamore, committed six first-quarter turnovers but soon settled down. The Rockets used a 9-2 run to draw within a point and twice kept it a one-point game on buckets by 6-foot-6 senior Josh Hudgens. He scored eight of his team-high 14 points in the second quarter.

Burlington trailed, 28-23, at the half after shooting 10 of 20 from the field. Then the bottom fell out. The Rockets made only 3 of 20 second-half shots. The Trojans led, 42-34, heading to the fourth quarter, but Burlington was unable to manage a field goal in seven tries.

“”We just missed a lot of good quality shots,” Rockets coach Brett Porto said. “Every time I thought we could have inched ahead and taken a lead, especially late first half, we just couldn’t capitalize on some of the quality looks that we got.”

The silver lining? The Rockets held the Trojans to 41% shooting from the field (16 of 39).

“I’m not upset with our defense at all,” Porto said. “I thought we played them pretty well. We learned some things tonight about how we’ll defend them the next time.”

Frank Jakubicek finished with 12 points and seven rebounds for C-G, which hosts Huntley on Friday.

Jake Lenschow contributed eight points, and sophomores Carson Seyller and Zac Schmidt each added five points for Burlington.