Lake Park's defense shuts down Elgin

Senior-led Lake Park snapped a four-game losing streak Friday by teaching young Elgin a lesson about life on the road in the Upstate Eight Conference.

The visiting Maroons, with a starting lineup consisting of two sophomores, two juniors and one senior, were unable to penetrate a Lake Park defense fortified by four seniors and a junior. The Lancers held Elgin to 7 field goals through three quarters en route to a 54-42 victory that wasn't as close as the final score indicated.

Elgin (2-5, 0-3) scored the first 4 points of the game on drives by Tim Newcombe and Brandon Baymon, but Lake Park (4-4, 1-1) switched mainly to a 1-3-1 non-trapping zone defense and held the Maroons to just 4 field goals over the next 22:40.

Elgin turned the ball over 6 times in the first quarter as the Lancers ripped off 10 straight points to take a 10-4 lead, capped by a pair of drives to his left by senior guard Matt Drufke. He led all scorers with 20 points.

"The zone definitely played into our hands because even when we got beat off the dribble our bigs were there helping us out, meeting them outside the lane," Drufke said. "We really picked up the intensity defensively, were able to force turnovers and get rebounds. We were able to outlet and push and we got a lot of easy buckets in transition."

Elgin coach Mike Sitter said the Maroons spent most of Thursday's practice preparing to attack Lake Park's 1-3-1 zone, but the effort didn't translate to the game court.

"These kids bust their butts in practice," Sitter said. "I mean, they are flying all over the floor. We usually leave practice bloody. Then we come out here and we have some kids who still get scared because we have kids who don't have varsity experience and we have some kids who get intimidated by the lack of size, by being in a different gym or whatever.

"It's just stage fright still, and we're too far into our season to have kids getting scared. We just need to react better to this environment, step up and react better to varsity basketball."

Lake Park led 12-9 early in the second quarter when another 10-point burst, fueled by 6 of Dominique Spencer's 14 points and 3 of his 11 rebounds, put the Lancers in command. They led 27-14 at the half and held Elgin to 1-of-9 shooting in the third quarter to take a 45-20 lead to the final period.

"We've had two or three games where we had the lead late and we haven't closed the deal," Lake Park coach Josh Virostko said. "Tonight I felt like we expanded it. When we got a chance to make a 5-point lead a 10-point lead we did, and we haven't done that all year."

Elgin finally came alive in the fourth quarter behind 12 of sophomore Kory Brown's team-high 13 points and outscored the Lancers 22-9 to make the score respectable. However, it was too little too late.

"The biggest part was us not being aggressive enough," Elgin sophomore guard Dennis Moore said. "We have to attack the basket more and look for open players. That was our problem tonight. We just weren't aggressive enough."