Balanced South Elgin wins season opener
What started as a nip-and-tuck nail-biter quickly turned into a one-sided affair in the second half in the boys basketball season opener between the South Elgin Storm and the Glenbrook South Titans at the 22nd Annual Chuck Mitchell Thanksgiving Tournament at Fenton High School Monday night.
With the score 23-22 at the half in the Storm's favor, South Elgin center Daniel Lopez rattled off 6 of his 8 points to begin a 19-6 third quarter before an eventual 53-34 Storm victory.
"It's our defensive pressure that we've been working on the last two weeks," said Storm coach Chaz Taft. "We came out strong in the second half and started forcing turnovers."
In the first half, both teams turned the ball over 8 times while the Storm only had 3 turnovers in the second half compared to the Titans' 11.
"I think the poise was there on the wing," Taft said. "We wanted to make sure that they could see everyone and hold onto the ball."
The Storm had everyone involved in the offense as Alex Sanchez led the team with 12 points, including two 3-pointers, while Josh Glenn had 10 points with two 3-point baskets.
"It was great to start the season off right," Sanchez said. "The whole team came together, and we passed the ball around a lot. We have a very unselfish team."
For the Titans, Jack Cooley started the team off with 7 of its first 9 points while Glenbrook took a 9-5 lead.
But the Storm would rally back after a 13-9 deficit to tie the game at 13-all on a buzzer-beating basket from behind the arc by Glenn with an assist from Jeffrey Lewis passing in traffic to end the first quarter.
From there, the Titans would hold only one more lead as Raul Hudema started the second quarter with the first basket before the Storm went on a 10-0 run.
The Storm will face Rolling Meadows today, and Taft is hoping to see another effort like he saw from his team Monday night.
"It's nice to come out and take the first game, and it comes with experience," Taft said. "Last year, had we started off strong, who knows what we would've done. Hopefully we can come out (today) and do the same. Rolling Meadows is a good physical team."
Walther Lutheran 63, West Chicago 42: West Chicago got off to a slow start in its season-opener at the Marmion Invitational, and eventually fell 63-42 to Walther Lutheran.
"I think certainly in the first quarter, we had a lot of turnovers," West Chicago coach Kevin Gimre said. "Walther put on a lot of pressure and we've got to be able to handle that."
The Wildcats (0-1) fell behind 28-13 at halftime and were behind by 25 points early in the second half when they began to rally.
"We've got a lot of juniors and sophomores and they had a lot of jitters," Gimre said.
The rally failed to bring West Chicago into contact with the Broncos (1-0), but the deficit more than halved through the comeback.
"We played a much better game in the third and fourth quarter," Gimre said. "They were able to see that we can do some good things. We've just got to do a better job handling the basketball, and hopefully that'll come."
West Chicago's Tyler Wrzesinski led all scorers with 18 points. Cedric Collins scored 14 points to pace Walther Lutheran.
Aurora Central 58, Streator 48: Nick Czaja scored 14 points and Mark Adams added 13 in the Chargers' win in the first game of Sandwich's tournament.
BG 71, Elgin 59: Buffalo Grove hatched a plan and executed it to perfection Monday night.
Elgin did little to thwart it.
The Bison wanted to run with the speedy, experienced boys basketball team from Elgin when possible, fight for rebounding position against their taller opponents and force them to shoot low-percentage outside shots.
Check, check and check.
Buffalo Grove out-rebounded visiting Elgin 32-19, met little opposition when penetrating the lane in transition and forced the Maroons to settle for more jumpers than drives in a 71-59, season-opening victory at the Bison Thanksgiving Tournament, ruining the debut of new Elgin coach Mike Sitter.
The Bison ballooned their 39-35 halftime lead to a 15-point advantage by bursting out of the locker room on a 14-3 run that defined the game.
Senior Brian DeSimone canned an open 3-pointer from the top of the arc to start the spurt, drove the lane on a fast break to keep it going, and capped it with another open look from 3-point range. The last of those shots gave the Bison a 51-38 lead with 3:41 left in the quarter.
"We wanted to get them down as soon as we could to start the half," said DeSimone, who led all scorers with 23 points. "We wanted to come out right away, make some shots and stop them on defense."
Mike Ricciardi put BG ahead 53-38 seconds later after DeSimone fed him in the paint for an uncontested bucket, one of many looks that came too easy in Elgin's opinion.
"We just didn't get the job done defensively," said Sitter. "We can get so much better defensively. It takes all of our practice time, yet after the first five minutes it didn't show.
"We get tired, we stop communicating, we stop helping out our teammates. We have guys going coast to coast on us, and that just can't continue. I'll keep going down to the end of the bench until I find five guys who are going to stop dribble penetration."
-- Jerry Fitzpatrick