Aurora Central keeps rolling, improves to 8-0
The Aurora Central Catholic boys basketball team capped the weekend perfect in Suburban Catholic Conference play.
On Friday, the Chargers convincingly topped St. Edward, 75-61. On Saturday in Aurora, they beat Montini, 61-42, to improve to 8-0 overall and 2-0 in the conference.
"It feels good we are off to a good start," ACC coach Nate Drye said. "We really wanted to get through the weekend with a couple of wins. We had a tough one (Friday) against St. Ed's and the kids really came through. We talked about how it really wasn't worth anything if we didn't finish it off tonight. The kids really came out and finished it off and put them away early."
Montini never led -- just tied it at 2 in the opening minutes of the game. Right after that, ACC went on a 9-0 run and capped the quarter on a Mark Adams jumper at the buzzer to give his team the 17-5 advantage. He finished the quarter with 7 points.
Younger brother Mike Adams went 4-for-4 from the field in the first quarter.
"They both came out and played well," Drye said of the Adams brothers. "Mike got us going real early. He had some nice jump hooks in the lane and started out on fire."
The run continued in the second quarter, as ACC scored the first 6 points. Anthony Blashewski's basket stopped ACC's run with 5:08 left in the first half, but by then, the Chargers led 23-7, capping a 16-3 run.
The Broncos finally reached double-digits in scoring after a conventional 3-point play Kevin Pope with 25.7 remaining in the half. The Chargers led 29-12 at the break.
"Our defense was on," Drye said. "We covered the court well. Our (guards), (Mark) Brauweiler and (Steve) Hollon did a nice job challenging their shooters."
ACC never let Montini (2-5, 0-2) in the game. The closest the Broncos could come to reaching the Chargers was in the opening minutes of the third after a pair of Zach Brash free throws cut ACC's lead to 29-14.
After that, the Chargers went on an 11-0 run, led by back-to-back conventional 3-point plays from Mike Adams.
Throughout the rest of the game, Montini trailed by 20 or more points. The Broncos trailed at most 53-25 after Mark Adams hit a pair of free throws with 5:32 left in the game.
After scoring 21 points in the first three quarters, the Broncos doubled their total in the final frame.
"We were very disappointed with pretty much everything," Montini coach Tom Sloan said. "I felt the kids did play harder in the second half…pretty much everything we talked about before the game and walked through, we let Aurora Central do in the first half."
ACC junior Nick Czaja led all scorers with his 19 points and 8 rebounds. He missed just one shot.
Mike and Mark Adams finished with stellar outings. Mark finished with 18 points and 5 rebounds while Mike posted 14 points and 7 rebounds.
Alex Blashewski led the Broncos with 13 points as their only player in double-digits.