Burlington Central wins big in regional opener
Perhaps the Burlington Central boys basketball team was inspired by Election Day in Chicago, because the Rockets scored early and often against Sycamore in the Class 3A Wheaton Academy regional semifinal at Tuesday night.
The result was a 58-35 blowout victory, their second of the year against the Spartans, that was not as close as the score may seem to indicate. Burlington Central led by as many as 31, that when they found themselves up 53-22 after three quarters.
The Rockets advance to face the winner of Wednesday evening's game between host Wheaton Academy and Marmion Academy on Friday night. But if Burlington Central plays like it did against Sycamore, the result may just be academic.
The win was the sixth straight for the Rockets, who improved to 24-8. Patrick Mayfield, Burlington Central's prolific senior scorer, went for 38 the first time these two teams met, when BC knocked off Sycamore 68-51 on the Spartans' home wood in early December.
This time, Mayfield had to settle for 15 and a share of game-high scoring honors with teammate Jake Lenschow. Mayfield had just 2 points in the first quarter before making a decidedly more concerted effort to put the ball in the bucket in the second, when he scored 9.
Lenschow and Mayfield were backed up by Logan Andersen, who came off the bench to score 10 of his 13 points in the opening quarter and enjoyed a perfect 5-for-5 shooting night with a full house - a trio of treys over a pair of deuces.
"Logan's been shooting the ball really well the last week and a half or so," explained Rockets coach Brett Porto. "It's nice to see him be confident and go out there and get it going right away. That's one of the reason's he's in that spot for us. This was one of the few times all year where I thought we really did a good job off the double teams and triple teams and started finding the open cutter and the guy down by the hoop. Can't complain about 41 points in a half, that's for sure."
Sycamore (11-18) was led by junior guard Grant McConkey's 14, 10 of which came in the first quarter. Unfortunately, he was the only Spartan to score in the stanza.
The game was never in doubt, as Burlington Central led 21-10 after eight minutes and 41-18 at halftime.
"We've really been striving for our team defense to be good the last two or three weeks, and I thought in the first half we played some pretty good D, except for letting (McConkey) get going a little early," added Porto. "We held them to 18 points and you can't be disappointed with that type of effort."
Asked if Mayfield's slow start was an attempt to get other Rockets ignited, Porto said, "We were just trying to play our normal game and we were able to find the open guys. They were really chasing Patrick hard. We did a really nice job of making the extra pass and the correct pass. As a result, guys knocked shots down and made layups."