IC hands St. Edward fourth straight loss

One team's losing streak had to end Tuesday night.

Thanks to a 10-1 second-quarter run to break open a 3-point game, the Immaculate Conception boys basketball team snapped an nine-game slide with a 66-50 victory over St. Edward in Elgin.

"It's been a long stretch," IC coach Darren Howard said. "We lost some games we should have won."

The Knights (6-10, 2-3) last won on Dec. 3 against Guerin. They trailed 4-3 with 5:40 remaining in the first quarter. After a Demetrius Mobley basket, IC took a 5-4 lead and never trailed again. Mobley's bucket started an 8-0 run as the Knights took an 11-4 lead. Mobley scored five points during that span.

"He's our leader. We kind of go offensively as Demetrius goes," Howard said. "When he's hot and hard to stop it opens it up for everyone else."

St. Edward (4-11), which has lost four straight and eight of nine, got within 3, 21-18, after an Edward O'Halloran 3-pointer with 5:35 left in the first half. But IC responded with a 10-1 run to take a 31-19 lead.

The Green Wave got within 5, 37-32, 3 minutes into the second half. The Knights' Brian Harvey hit a free throw and Mobley scored five consecutive points as IC increased the lead to back to 11, 43-32, in just a minute and a half.

St. Edward cut the deficit under double digits for less than 30 seconds the rest of the way.

Anthony Loss had 14 points for the Knights. Mobley added 9 rebounds. Harvey finished with 10 points and 6 rebounds, but did his best work defending St. Edward leading scorer Michael Ellis in the Knights' box-and-one defense.

Ellis scored on steal and layup a minute into the game. That was his only field goal, going 1 for 5, to finish with 5 points. O'Halloran led the Green Wave with 17 points. Ben Lehman added 9 points.

"We just tried to stay with him," Mobley said of Ellis. "Brian Harvey did a great job and we played good team defense."