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Vaughn powers Batavia

Instead of a letdown Elliot Vaughn decided to throw down.

The Batavia junior center hammered a pair of slam dunks as part of his career-high 20-point, 15-rebound performance in the Bulldogs' 70-48 Western Sun win over visiting Yorkville Saturday night.

The Bulldogs (15-7, 8-4) followed their last-second win over Geneva Friday with a much easier victory. Vaughn scored 10 points in the first quarter, helping Batavia to an 8-point lead that soon became a double-digit margin the rest of the way.

"It was really fun," Vaughn said. "We came out with energy, emotion. It was really fun the entire night especially with a comfortable lead."

Tavis Gibson's 3-pointer to open the scoring gave Yorkville (8-15, 3-9) what turned out to be its only lead. Vaughn got going quickly, scoring his first basket on an assist from Jesse Coffey and his second on a stickback to make it 4-3.

Vaughn's first slam came on a feed from Sam Shump midway through the first quarter. Adam LeTourneau's steal and layup followed by another Vaughn putback put the Foxes behind 16-8 after a quarter.

"He was making a living above the rim," Batavia coach Jim Roberts said of Vaughn. "Very aggressive."

Besides Vaughn, Yorkville had two more problems in the first half: handling Batavia's three-quarter court trap, and keeping the Bulldogs off the offensive glass.

Batavia outrebounded Yorkville 29-11 in the first half as the Bulldogs pushed their halftime lead to 35-22.

"Coach said we had a little bit of height on them so we wanted to try to capitalize on both the defensive boards and offensive boards," Vaughn said.

Vaughn got plenty of help on the glass from Cole Gardner (7 rebounds) and Ricky Clopton (6 rebounds, 4 blocked shots).

The Bulldogs started the third quarter on a 10-3 run to open a 47-25 lead keyed by a pair of Coffey 3-pointers. The Bulldogs led by at least 15 points the rest of the game, capping their scoring fittingly on another offensive rebound - Greg Ideran's putback in the closing seconds.

"They got too many offensive rebounds. I thought that was the key in the first half. We had position we just didn't box them out hard enough," said Yorkville coach Jerry Faber, who also pointed to his teams's 9 first-half turnovers.

"We knew they were going to press, we just didn't do anything with it. We were playing catch-up and it's hard to do."

Coffey assisted on Vaughn's second slam that gave the Bulldogs their largest lead, 61-38 with 4:20 remaining.

Clopton added 16 points, Coffey scored 15 and LeTourneau 8.

Derek Piszczek led Yorkville with 14 points.