South Elgin 77, Streamwood 60

Pressure defense staked the South Elgin boys basketball team to a 37-26 halftime lead over Streamwood.

Storm guard Adam Hodge's red-hot shooting in the third quarter made sure that lead never dissipated in South Elgin's 77-60 victory over the Sabres at the Class 4A Larkin regional Monday night.

The Storm hounded Streamwood (6-21) into 13 first-half turnovers, miscues that sparked South Elgin (13-14) on a 16-0 run that erased a 14-9 deficit.

Hodge kept Streamwood from creeping back into contention by going 6 of 7 from the field in the second half, including a 6-for-6 performance from 3-point range after the intermission.

Hodge, who scored 28 points in a 77-61 victory over Streamwood on Feb. 2., finished with a career-best 30 points on 10-of-12 shooting. He sank 7 of the 8 shots he attempted from 3-point range in the game.

"I got into a rhythm," Hodge said. "I play with the most unselfish team around here. They were able to find me, and I was able to keep moving around off screens."

Streamwood's defense left Hodge alone too often, which wasn't exactly the plan.

"Well, believe it or not, we knew he was gonna shoot it," Streamwood coach Tim Jones said. "The guys we had on him… You can't leave him. Unfortunately, we left him too many times when we're not supposed to."

Junior Tem Esikiel scored 29 points on 9-of-17 shooting. South Elgin tried to force the ball out of Esikiel's hands and into the hands of other Sabres as often as possible by trapping the Streamwood point guard at midcourt.

The strategy seemed to work; Streamwood finished with 23 turnovers.

"They played real good defense," Esikiel said. "They denied me from the ball. All of our guards didn't do a very good job of handling the ball. That's way too many turnovers."

South Elgin advances to face St. Charles North (16-11) in a regional semifinal today at 7:30 p.m., weather permitting.

The North Stars defeated South Elgin 60-49 on Feb. 15.

"This was a good win for us," said Storm coach Chaz Taft, whose career playoff record improved to 2-1. "We're just trying to take it one game at a time. Now, here we go: we've got St. Charles North (tonight)."