Kaneland shuts down Burlington Central

The Kaneland boys basketball team got back into the win column Saturday by holding Burlington Central's top two scorers in check in a 65-46 victory on Pack the Place night on Rocket Hill.

Kaneland junior guard Dan Miller (6-foot-3) kept tabs on Central's leading scorer, senior guard Ray Hunnicutt (5-11), throughout the game. Hunnicutt scored 12 points to lead the Rockets, but the total was well below the career 1,000-point scorer's average of 18.9 points per game.

Likewise, junior sharpshooter Ryan Ritchie was dogged by a designated chaser most of the game. Ritchie sank three 3-pointers and scored 11 points, nearing his 13-point average, but he had to work for his points on 3-of-12 shooting from long distance.

"That was definitely one of our main keys to win this game," said 6-4 Kaneland senior guard Marcel Neil, who led all scorers with 18 points. "They're both very capable scorers. Hunnicutt gets to the basket and he's real strong and Ritchie can knock down shots and get hot, so we had make sure we stayed focused on defense first and that got our offense going."

Burlington Central (8-8) struggled to find offensive consistency as a result.

"We still haven't figured it out on offense in situations like that where you have to screen and screen and screen," Central coach Brett Porto said. "It's not going to be the first or second option. It's going to be 40 seconds of offense, running through three screens instead of one screen. When they take certain things away you have to really execute your screens in your offense to get things open."

Kaneland led 30-25 at the intermission despite shooting only 36 percent from the field in the first half (13 of 36). The Knights used 8 second-chance field goals to stay in the lead.

Because their outside shots weren't falling early, Kaneland players drove to the hoop more in the second half. The result was an 11-of-18 shooting performance in the final two quarters (61 percent).

Neil was the main attacker for Kaneland (10-5), which lost at Yorkville on Friday. He scored 14 points in the first half despite missing all 5 attempts from 3-point range. He converted 3 of 5 second-half shots by driving to the rim more regularly, and his back-to-back buckets to open the fourth quarter upped Kaneland's lead to 14 points for the first time.

Neil finished with 13 rebounds to record a double-double.

"He's tough from the outside when he's hitting his shots, but he did a nice job of adjusting and getting to the bucket,' Kaneland coach Brian Johnson said. "He's a good player and he hits the boards hard, especially on the offensive end."

The loss was the second straight for the Rockets, who slipped to .500.

"I hope that game sparks us because I know I'm getting sick of it," Ritchie said of losing. "Coming off the North Boone loss (Thursday), I just want to go back out and practice. I don't want to have a day off. I think if we play as a team, all 16 of us, we can turn this thing around."

"There's a lot of basketball left to be played," Porto said. "We have to see things start translating from practice into games. We just have to see the offense that we work on and the other things we work on. For some reason it's just not carrying over."

Sophomore guard Drew David finished with 15 points and senior forward Matt Limbrunner contributed 12 points for Kaneland.

Sophomore Duncan Ozburn contributed 6 points and 6 rebounds for the Rockets.