Michael O’Brien’s notebook: Dec. 1, 2016

I’ve lived in the Ukranian Village neighborhood of Chicago since 1999 and I write about high school basketball for a living, but I’d never been to a game at Clemente before today.

That was clearly a mistake.

I took the six-minute walk over to Division and Western today and watched a really well-played, fun game between the Wildcats and neighborhood rival Wells.

Read all about it here.

It was a refreshing, real high school basketball game in front of a nice crowd of students. Admission was only $1. A little bit different from the massive two days ahead of us at the Chicago Elite Classic.

Joe Henricksen previews that here.

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Thursday’s games:

Hope 56, Crane 51: Namon Smith followed his 45 point game by scoring 30 against the Courgars.

Stagg 64, Thornwood 54: The Thunderbirds have sort of stuck with some good teams, but haven’t quite pulled off a win yet. Chargers back to winning ways after the Addison Trail loss.

Harvest Christian 85, St. Edward 63: Sophomore poing guard Andrew White Jr. scores 24., JJ Flores adds 21 and Brennen Woods scored 16.

Aurora Central 49, Joliet Catholic 42: With the yellow cards behind him Brett Czerak scored 23 points to lead the Chargers to their first win of the season. Mac Cowen added 11 and Kyle Czerak scored eight.

Westinghouse 73, King 44: Massive game from Coreyoun Rushin with 31 points, 14 rebounds and eight blocks. Dexter Reed added 11 points and 11 rebounds. Large margin of victory for the Warriors. Looks like the Jaguars have fallen on some hard times.