South Elgin rallies past East Aurora

A hot start by East Aurora knocked the South Elgin boys basketball team off its guard early Saturday.

But the Tomcats cooled off thanks to foul trouble and the Storm rallied around Julian Lynch to take a 65-56 Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division victory in South Elgin.

East Aurora came out shooting in the first quarter, scoring 25 points and holding a 12-point lead, seemingly killing any momentum the Storm (4-4, 2-2) had after beating Waubonsie Valley Thursday night for their first conference win.

"We could see it in practice a little bit, we were so happy (to beat Waubonsie) that they seemed to forget that there are more games after that," Storm coach Matt Petersen said. "We couldn't even get into the right defense to start the game. We couldn't stop them from scoring until we figured out where we were at."

Hitting just 5-of-16 shots from the field in the first quarter and failing to get the rebounds also hurt South Elgin defensively. But as the game rolled on, the Storm seemed to get comfortable on the defensive side of the ball when Collin Uveges came off the bench and forced 3 turnovers off a full-court press.

"Eventually in the first half they started to kind of get it and the aggression and momentum started to turn our way," Petersen said. "Uveges gave us a great spark off the bench to settle us defensively. We told them at half that East was going to come out and struggle if we kept applying pressure."

That line of thought certainly seemed to work for the Storm as they held the Tomcats to just 6 points in the second quarter and cut the deficit down to 32-25 at the half despite still not shooting well from the floor, going just 4-of-11 in the quarter.

Much of the offense was generated by Lynch, as he scored 6 points in the paint after hitting just one such shot in the first. Lynch only got stronger as the game went on, ending with a game-high 17 points after having just 2 in the first quarter.

"We struggle to finish at the rim and we go up very softly," Petersen said. "East was creating a lot of contact around the basket and we tried to work around that by fading and looping our shots. At halftime we told Julian to pump fake and go up strong. He had no soft finishes after that in the second half."

Lynch also benefitted from just focusing more on where he was putting the ball when he made his shots.

"I really had to focus more on where I was throwing the ball up in the air to get a good layup," Lynch said. "I was just rushing it. Then coach told me to go up stronger and it helped."

The Tomcats' (2-5, 1-3) big man inside, Ron McBride, seemed to cause most of the problems for Lynch early, but McBride sat for almost the entire third quarter after getting his fourth foul one minute into the second half.

"It opened up the middle an awful lot when (McBride) went out," Petersen said. "They went to zone to try and hide it, but we eventually found the open person in the middle."

Using their new defensive effort and Lynch on the inside, the Storm took the lead for the first time with 2:30 left in the third quarter and never looked back from there.

They scored 40 points in the second half, buoyed by four players, including Lynch, in double figures.

Uveges had 10 points off the bench while Logan Atkins finished with 12 points and Anthony Lynch finished with 13 points and 6 rebounds.

East Aurora was led by McBride with 15 points, despite sitting for most the third quarter, as he was perfect from the field until the fourth quarter.

Franklin Montgomery also had double figure points with 14, to go with 7 boards, along with Daishon Smith (10 points) and 13 points from Anthony Peters.