Saxons put together solid finish

ROCKFORD - Schaumburg used a strong third quarter, a big night from senior guard Cully Payne and great team free-throw shooting down the stretch to defeat Rockford Auburn 60-54 Friday night at the Boylan Boys' Thanksgiving Tournament.

Trailing 30-25 at the half, Schaumburg (2-0) outscored the Knights (1-1) 18-9 in the third quarter to seize momentum and head to victory.

"I'm pleased and impressed with our style of play the whole second half," Schaumburg coach Bob Williams said. "We really came out and executed Schaumburg basketball. Rockford Auburn is a very good team. Everybody is talking about them being one of the best teams in this area."

Williams said there wasn't an explosive locker room pep talk that sparked the higher intensity in the second half. Instead, there was a discussion of what Williams wanted to accomplish and an understanding by his players of what needed to be done.

"As a Schaumburg team there are certain ideals we have in our program that we have always had and they start with the effort. We just talked about that," Williams said. "We're playing a style that is difficult. The kids got to make a lot of mental and physical effort on a continual basis, because it is up and down and full court."

Payne, who has signed a scholarship to play for Alabama next year, scored a game-high 27 points.

"We expect that out of him and we count on him to be doing certain things with the ball and be in certain places," Williams said. "A lot of that is scoring, but setting up things as well. And I thought he did a great job of that today."

In the fourth quarter, the Saxons made 17-of-22 free throws, which accounted for all of their points in the quarter.

"We spend a lot of time on it, so it's nice to see it payoff," Williams said of Schaumburg's free-throw shooting. "We shoot 25 every day and that takes some time out of practice. But we think it is important and our kids executed that."

Senior guard Perrish Bell had 13 points for the Saxons and senior guard Justin Swiercz chipped in with 9.

Darnell Van Vleet led the way for the Knights with 20 points.

Barrington splits: Barrington had some factors going against it before the opening tip of its game against Boylan on Friday night at the Boylan Boys' Thanksgiving Tournament.

First, Barrington had already played Rochelle at 2 p.m. before taking on Boylan at 7:15 p.m. This was because Orr pulled out of the tournament just before it began.

And second, Barrington's Kyle O'Keefe, who had scored 19 points in the first game, was noticeably affected by an injury to his hip, which happened when O'Keefe fell hard to the floor in the first contest. He was held scoreless against Boylan.

Lastly, that first game went into overtime and was an up-and-down 90-84 loss for the Broncos.

So when Boylan came out pressing and pushing the tempo, Barrington could only hang on for so long before the legs grew heavy and the Titans pulled away for a 79-54 victory.

"We don't want to use that as an excuse," Barrington coach Marty Dello said. "We played a lot of guys today. We had some guys really step up and do a really good job."

Dello pointed to junior guard Bryan Wegner as someone who did stepped up for the Broncos against Boylan. Wegner finished the game with 16 points.

Boylan led 37-32 at the half and the game was close until Boylan went on a big run with about 1:30 to play in the third quarter.

"In that stretch where they kind of blitzed us we took Wegner out of the game because of fatigue," Dello said. "And he was our point guard. They put on their press and we didn't do a great job of taking care of the ball."

The two games Barrington played on Friday were its first of the season. Dello said the Broncos have a lot of football players on the roster, who have only had four or five basketball practices.

Dello also said that because Barrington's football team went to the quarterfinals players such as Cam Good, Sam Ojuri, Daniel Evers and Terrance Terry all still have some bumps and bruises to get healed up.

Forward Mack Darrow had 16 points for the Broncos and forward Bryant Sullivan added 9 off the bench against Boylan.