Boys basketball: Cocroft, Kaneland overwhelm Timothy Christian with pressure, roll into Plano semifinals

As the two-time defending champions of the Plano Christmas Classic, Kaneland knows it has a big target on its back again this holiday season.

Timothy Christian had its eyes set on that target during Saturday’s second round game against the Knights, but succumbed to overwhelming defensive pressure as Kaneland rolled to a 65-33 victory.

Marshawn Cocroft seized control of the game for the Knights. He did offensively, scoring a game-high 22 points while dishing out five assists and committing a single turnover, and defensively, snatching five steals.

“We know every night, no matter what team we play, they are going to try their hardest and try to beat us because everyone wants to beat us,” Cocroft said. “So we just know that every night we got to come out hard and take them out in maybe the second or third quarter. We got to shut them down quickly.”

Kaneland (11-0) advances to Monday’s semifinal at 7 p.m. against LaSalle-Peru. Last season, the Knights beat the Cavaliers three times.

Timothy Christian (6-5) led early as Marc Gamble’s three-pointer from the top of the key with 2:20 remaining in the first quarter gave the Trojans a 10-9 lead.

The lead would last a half minute as Kaneland’s Jalen Carter, who scored 12 points, hammered home his second of his four three-pointers to spark a 14-0 run that would culminate with his third three of the game with 4:44 left in the second quarter for a 23-10 lead.

The Knights led by double figures the rest of the afternoon.

“We drill shooting a lot at practice and spend probably over half the time just shooting, getting shots up and what we do in practice correlates to what we do in games,” Carter said. “We definitely brought a lot of energy and I think that helped us with our focus and just playing together. And we were all locked in today. Pretty much every time we play, their goal is to stop Marshawn so as a team we have to figure out ways to score without Marshawn because when they’re guarding him we have to play our part and hit those open shots.”

Timothy Christian was able to keep Kaneland’s 6-foot-9 big man, Jeffery Hassan, from scoring from the field until 5:40 remained in the third quarter, but his first of five baskets allowed the Knights to double up the Trojans, 38-19.

Hassan finished with 17 points and a game-high eight rebounds.

The Trojans could not avoid Kaneland’s turnover-minded defense, with Cocroft leading that attack, seemingly glued to wherever the ball took him.

“We had a little bit of a David versus Goliath here tonight, but I thought we battled with them for the first 13-14 minutes of the game,” Timothy Christian coach Peyton Wyatt said.

“Once the live ball turnovers started to happen it snowballs and that was a key for us. I said guys throw this thing out of bounds before we give it to them. They’re just really elite when it comes to live ball turnovers, it’s NBA-type stuff where it’s two points. They’re just big and athletic and turnovers are their best offense and it’s easy to say don’t turn it over but it’s another thing to actually do it.”

Carter’s final three-pointer with 7:11 remaining ignited the running clock with a 57-27 lead.

Fighting through foul issues, Gamble led the Trojans with 10 points and six rebounds. Charlie Crichton added eight points.

“Marc is playing at a really high level right now,” Wyatt said. “He’s playing the best basketball of his career right now and it’s awesome to coach him.”

This is a new adventure for the Trojans who played at York’s Jack Tosh last year at this time.

They’ll look to bounce back against Ottawa on Monday at 3:30 p.m.