Bolingbrook completely overwhelms Naperville Central

Raiders to face Metea Valley in regional final

Bolingbrook's Trey Brost

BOLINGBROOK – Bolingbrook point guard Trey Brost sometimes has a problem that many other point guards would certainly appreciate.

The junior distributor might have too many options to choose from.

That was certainly on display during Wednesday’s first semifinal contest at the Bolingbrook Class 4A Regional where the host and top-seeded Raiders dismantled Naperville Central 75-33.

The win lifts Bolingbrook (29-4) into Friday night’s regional title game against Metea Valley (19-13). Metea Valley defeated Plainfield North 74-56 in the second semifinal of the night.

Bolingbrook wasted no time in establishing what tempo the game would be played at, and that quick pace immediately caused problems for the Redhawks.

It took only 18 seconds for the Raiders to jump out to a quick 4-0 lead when Kendall Cutler was fouled while making a 3-pointer and just minutes before Bolingbrook’s advantage reached double digits.

Brost played a large part in engineering a lot of the offensive surge and admits that sometimes the dizzying array of offensive weapons the Raiders can cause an issue, but a particularly good one.

“We’ve got a lot of pieces and our coaches do a good job of helping us run the offense and giving us like the freedom to play together,” Brost said. “It’s almost like good and bad, but you would rather have more than less. And it is really fun to try to get everyone involved.”

Everyone pretty much did for the Raiders early on. Midway through the first quarter, all five Bolingbrook starters had scored at least two points. The Raiders found themselves up 25-8 after the first quarter and then scored the first 15 points of the second quarter to extend the lead past 30.

Naperville Central wouldn’t score in the second quarter for over six minutes until Alex Llabo stopped the drought with a 3-pointer. But those were the only points the Redhawks scored in the quarter as Bolingbrook led 40-11 at halftime.

“I thought we did a good job, when we share and play right we can be pretty good,” Bolingbrook coach Rob Brost said. “As everybody knows, we want to play fast and get out in transition, get out in space and share. That’s the way basketball should be played in my opinion.”

The Raiders continued to do those things in the second half with a flurry of third-quarter offense from a multitude of sources. Davion Thompson led Bolingbrook with 24 points, Brady Pettigrew added 19 and JT Pettigrew had 10 before all of the Bolingbrook regulars sat during the running clock in the fourth quarter.

Naperville Central (8-21) got 17 points from Alex Llabo.

Metea Valley 74, Plainfield North 56

Metea Valley broke open a tight game with some spectacular second-quarter shooting and never really cooled off.

Tre Watkins led the surge for Metea with 10 of his team-high 22 points as the Mustangs extended a four-point lead after one quarter into a 11-point lead at the half (39-28).

Plainfield North tried to stay close, but despite the best efforts from Pierre Pointer (24 points) the Tigers struggled to keep the Metea advantage in single digits over the course of the second half.

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