West Aurora finishes off South Elgin

It's getting late in the boys basketball regular season, and teams are trying to find every bit of momentum they can manage before the postseason begins in March, and so results matter just a little more than they did in November.

West Aurora hosted South Elgin on Friday with each team having only five games to play in the regular season - and the host Blackhawks continued their recent good form with a 76-68 Upstate Eight Valley victory.

"This is a big 'W', " West Aurora's Damian Virgen said. "It's conference and this will help us as we get ready for regionals."

West Aurora improved to 6-14 with the win and is working to build momentum.

"We're a young team and, in the past, we haven't been able to finish games," West Aurora coach Brian Johnson said. "We finished a good one against East Aurora and finished hard against Benet to make it a game when we were down big. Now we finished on our home floor against a good South Elgin team."

South Elgin dropped its fourth straight game and fell to 11-13.

"In the first half, we played pretty well - Storm basketball," South Elgin coach Jim Cook said. "In the second half, things got away from us."

Trailing 23-17 early in the second quarter, West Aurora started a run that led to a 39-33 halftime lead.

"We had some kids coming through," Johnson said. "(Virgen) had his best game, Camron (Donatlan) passed the ball and had his best game of the year. It was definitely a team win."

That run continued into the third quarter, when the Blackhawks took their lead to 49-38 and fended off South Elgin's first comeback attempt.

"I felt we were talking better on defense," Virgen said. "We were sharing the ball more in the second half, and that gave us buckets, and we finished them and that gave us points."

South Elgin's strongest comeback attempt started at the end of the third quarter. But keyed by 10 fourth-quarter points by Virgen and strong team rebounding, the Blackhawks pulled away for the win.

West Aurora outrebounded South Elgin 40-25 in the game and 14-6 in the fourth quarter, the most important of the nonscoring stats in the contest.

"West Aurora did an outstanding job attacking the boards," Cook said. "The bottom line was that if we made our free throws and boxed out and got our defensive rebounds, then we'd have been in the game."

Virgen ended the game with 18 points while Caleb Siler (17), Donatlan (13) and Benjamin Young (10) hit double-digit scoring for West Aurora. South Elgin's Matthew Smith led all scorers with 27 points while Anthony Lynch added 19 points for the Storm.