A year of football made Lutheran North’s Jacob Burke a different player on the basketball court.

Jacob Burke of Lutheran North takes a free throw during a non-league game against Ford on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022. (GEORGE SPITERI for MediaNews Group)

“It helped a lot with my aggressiveness inside, like not being afraid to go up with anyone,” said Burke, who scored 14 points and gave the Mustangs a strong presence in the paint as they opened the basketball season Tuesday with a 48-28 non-league victory against Ford.
“I can be as physical as I can with anyone out there. I want to keep my presence on the court as high as it can be.”

Burke played tight end on the Lutheran North football team and had a good year with more than 500 receiving yards and six touchdowns.

“I think the difference in Jacob is that he played football for the first time this year,” said North coach Jeff DeMasse. “He’s in really good shape. He’s the Jacob we saw the last part of last season.
“He played well tonight. He’s very quick. He creates a matchup problem because he’s really a ‘three’ but he’s playing a ‘four.’ When a big man’s on him, he can drive — like you saw today.”

When Burke drove, he usually wound up at the free throw line. He was productive there, making 10 of his 14 foul shots.

“During the summer if I wasn’t at football camp, I was in the gym working on my free throws,” Burke said. “I felt this was my most important year and I knew that being one of the bigs on the team, I’d have a lot of time inside. I knew that if I practiced my free throws and I can out-physical people, I can have a good season.”

If Burke can provide an inside threat on offense, it will take some of the pressure off the Mustangs’ leading scorer last year, Ben Narr.

“Ben’s a great shooter, so if teams focus on him, it’ll open up the inside for everyone else,” Burke said.

Ben Narr tries to set up a play for Lutheran North during a non-league game against Ford on Tuesday. (GEORGE SPITERI for MediaNews Group)

Narr finished with 15 points and had seven of them during a 9-2 run that started late in the third quarter and put the Mustangs ahead 43-21 a minute into the fourth quarter.

DeMasse was pleased with North’s overall performance, but he was happiest with the defensive effort.

“I expect us to play well on defense, but I didn’t expect us to play that well,” he said. “We talked and we are athletic. I don’t care who you’re playing, to hold a team to 20-some points — especially a Jeremy (Denha)-coached team — I’ll take that all day. I’m excited.”

Burke said that the Mustangs spend a lot of practice time on defense.

“Our main focus in practice is defense,” he said. “We spend about an hour a day on defense. We knew they have a really good shooter in their point guard (Dakarai Rogers) and the scheme was to close out on him as much as possible and have our big guys lock down inside. Having our hands up on the perimeter was our main focus the whole game.”

Rogers, who led Ford with 12 points, is the only returning Falcon with much game experience.

“We wanted to set the tone tonight with our effort and I thought our kids played hard,” Denha said. “We have one returning player and we’re playing six sophomores. Everyone else are guys that moved up and it’s their first varsity experience. I thought we fought and competed. It’s just those two middle quarters that got us.”

Ford led 9-6 after one quarter after a 3-point basket by Rogers in the final minute, but the Mustangs outscored the Falcons 14-3 in the second quarter and 18-9 in the third.

“They do a great job in their zone,” Denha said of North. “They played that 2-3 zone and we had a hard time seeing over top of it. I liked some of the things we started doing in the second half, but we just couldn’t finish shots. We did some things against their man (defense) in the first quarter but we got really stagnant in the second quarter. We’ve got some guys who’ll fight and compete and I expect by February we’ll know who we are.”

The game featured a Jim Barker alumni reunion. Both coaches played for the Hall of Fame coach at Ford and Barker was at the game to watch his former players match wits on the sidelines.

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Ford 9 3 9 7—28
Lutheran North 6 14 18 10—48

Ford (0-1): Dakarai Rogers 12, Aaron Johnson 2, Diego Harden 2, Eli Miller 2, Gavin Guglielmetti 5, Dominic Cavacini 1, Lorenzo Childs 2, William Tauber 2. Totals: 9 (2) 8-20—28.

Lutheran North (1-0): Brayden Monroe 3, Ben Narr 15, Gio Lutfy 9, Jacob Burke 14, Benny Carroll 5, Ben Petersdorf 2. Totals: 15 (4) 14-24—48.