Rockford Boylan ends Kaneland's season
Kaneland boys basketball coach Joe Conroy thought he had the answer early for Rockford Boylan's press.
Having the edge on the glass and controlling the tempo, though, was another story.
The Knights survived the Titans' first-quarter pressure with just 2 turnovers but when Boylan turned on the jets and forced 5 in the second quarter that fueled an 18-5 run over the final 5 minutes, it was all she wrote for Kaneland in a 59-40 loss during Wednesday's Class 3A Woodstock North sectional semifinal.
Boylan (30-2), which took a 15-point lead into halftime and never looked back, held a 26-16 edge in rebounding and dominated the paint for 44 points en route to Friday's championship game against Glenbard South, while Kaneland's season ends at 20-9.
"We said this is a great basketball team, so if they start to create that margin, coming back from that margin is just too hard to get over the hump against a great basketball team," said Conroy, whose team led once and trailed 17-15 two minutes into the second quarter. "We just created too big of a hole for us in the second."
"We didn't realize at the time it was 18-5 but when you're looking back at the game you can't go on an 18-5 run an expect to win," Knights guard Dylan Vaca added. "It's hard to come back form that. We couldn't get the stops down low. You can only look at so much film and then when you get on the court, they're a couple inches taller than you. We saw they played physical and that they can shoot the 3 and we took that away. But they just killed us down low."
That was due in part to 6-foot-5 Zach Couper and 6-7 Sam Fehrle. Couper, Boylan's best outside shooter, got only two looks deep but still led all scorers with 14 points to go with his 8 rebounds and 2 steals. Six of his points came on layups during that second quarter run on layups while 6 came on second-chance putbacks.
Fehrle, on the other hand, stepped out to the perimeter in the fourth with a 3 that helped put a wrinkle in the Knights' late comeback attempt. But most of Fehrle's 13 points came at the rim as the Knights were clearly overwhelmed with Boylan's length, ability to attack the hoop and interchangeable parts.
"Our versatility's been key for us all year," Titans coach Mike Winters said. "We've been able to beat a lot of different styles of teams and it starts with players that can do a lot of things. We got our best 3-point shooter who can post up and post player can shoot 3s. When you've got those options in your back pocket as a coach, it's a luxury."
Boylan shot at a 48 percent clip while it made just 2 of its 8 3-point attempts whereas Kaneland was the antithesis. The Knights missed their first 5 shots to start and totaled just 28.5 percent shooting on 42 shots to go with 15 turnovers. Vaca led the way with 11 points while Ryan David added 10 points.
David, Ethan Conroy and Mark Lilly hit three-straight 3s in the first quarter to give the Knights an 11-8 lead, but they lost the lead thereafter when Fehrle scored consecutive baskets to end the first quarter on a 7-0 run. Vaca and David trimmed the deficit to 11 with 5:55 left in the fourth on a pair of 3s, but the Knights' offensive plan never really got going.
"Usually you want to work it inside out and we didn't get a chance to establish that," David said. "As the game went on the shots weren't falling and we weren't working well against the press. They were able to slow us down; we like to get out and run and they were able to stop that. They limited us in transition."