St. Patrick turns back St. Viator
An 18-0 run to start the fourth quarter is a great thing for every basketball team. It will, without a doubt, change the course of the game.
Saturday night, St. Patrick had such a run against St. Viator to help turn a 37-36 lead after three quarters into a 58-42 victory in the East Suburban Catholic Conference match up.
"To Viator's credit, we started out a little bit slow tonight," St. Patrick coach Mike Bailey said. "The senior leadership we had out of our guards (Bryant) Smith and (Tim) Traversa, and what we got out of (Korney) Darby, we just kind of picked it up a little bit in the second half."
Traversa and Darby sparked the run for St. Patrick. The duo combined for 15 of the Shamrocks' 22 fourth-quarter points. St. Viator didn't score in the final quarter until K.J. Sherwood made the front end of a 1-and-1 with 2:21 remaining in the game.
"We had taken some bad shots, missed some good shots and we had some turnovers, and that's not a good thing against a good team," St. Viator coach Joe Majkowski said. "It just kind of got away from us and I think our lack of offense kind of got us down a little bit."
St. Patrick (6-1, 3-0) had four players reach double figures in scoring: Smith (16), Traversa (14), Michael Frey (13) and Darby (11).
"We were making the simple things hard on ourselves by trying to do too much," Traversa said. "We knew we just needed to get down the basics and follow the game plan."
Majkowski said a team with as much balance as St. Patrick can be very tough to defend.
"They are a very good team and a balanced team," Majkowski said. "Traversa and Smith have been their main guys all year, and they were again tonight. They hurt us a little bit in the post and Frey is a great shooter. He got some open looks we would have rather not given him."
A night after scoring 33 points against Marian Catholic, Alan Aboona led St. Viator (5-2, 1-2) in scoring again, but this time with 12 points. Richard McLoughlin added 9 and Jack Etchingham had 8 points off the bench for the Lions.