Burlington C. takes care of St. Edward

After a triple-overtime thriller in the sophomore game, the St. Edward-Burlington Central varsity contest was almost anticlimactic.

The Rockets lead nearly all the way in a 59-49 nonconference boys basketball win in Burlington Saturday night.

The reasons the Rockets won were Ray Hunnicutt and the Green Wave’s inability to keep him out of the lane. The 5-foot-11 senior scored 30 points on a variety of cuts and slashes. He also made all 10 of his free-throw attempts.

After Adrian Ponce scored the game’s first 2 points for St. Edward, the Rockets scored 9 straight, and led by between 5 and 15 thereafter.

Burlington built its biggest bulge at 34-19 on 2 free throws by — who else? — Hunnicutt. The Wave answered with 10 straight points to cut the lead to 5, but that was as close as they got.

“Ray had a good game,” said Rockets’ coach Brett Porto. “They were giving him the lane, so we kind of rode his back tonight offensively. That made up for a lot of our inability at other positions to finish.”

Hunnicutt found open paths to the basket all night.

“I just saw that they turned their backs, and coach told us at the beginning if they turned their backs to attack,” he said after nearly matching his career high of 34 points. “I just attacked, and it worked out.”

Hunnicutt also grabbed a team-high 9 rebounds. Ryan Ritchie added 11 points off the bench, and Bryce Warner had 7 points and 6 boards for the Rockets (5-4).

Antonio Domel led a balanced attack for St. Edward (4-6), scoring all 11 of his points in the second half. Ponce and Eddie O’Halloran had 9 apiece and Troy Guidino and Doug Johnson each scored 8 for the Wave. Johnson also had 13 rebounds.

“Eventually the size and strength kind of wore us down again,” said St. Edward coach P.J. White. “We keep fighting and fighting but we can’t seem to get over the hump.”

“We did just enough tonight,” said Porto. “We were looking for a little bit better contributions all through (the lineup). Our execution was not good at times, but we battled and did just enough to come out in the win column.”