St. Francis 52, Immaculate Conception 34

A strong perimeter game looked like the recipe for success in the first half for the St. Francis Spartans in their boys basketball contest with Immaculate Conception on Friday night.

But a strong defensive effort from the visitors made St. Francis change its style to an inside game in the second half.

Nevertheless, the change worked to perfection as the Spartans used a second-half surge to defeat IC 52-34 in Suburban Catholic Conference action in Wheaton.

"We got good looks and knocked them down when we needed to (in the first half)," St. Francis coach Shawn Healy said. "We've got some good shooters on this team. Our passing was off, though. We needed to make crisper passes."

St. Francis (9-4, 4-1) opened the game with an 8-0 run on a pair of 3-pointers from Jack Purdom and a basket from John Ritt.

IC (5-7, 2-3) fought back to close within 8-4 after Brendan Ryan's jumper with 2:05 left, but the Spartans halted the rally and responded with a 12-1 run to take a 20-5 lead on Dan McCoy's 3-pointer at the 4:46 mark of the second quarter. St. Francis led 27-13 at halftime.

"I actually thought we played pretty well," IC coach Darren Howard said. "Our offense looked good, but we just didn't finish. They were aggressive on the glass and that caught our guys off guard."

The Knights, though, made things interesting in the second half. They closed the gap to as narrow as 30-23 after a basket by Matt Purdom -- Jack's cousin -- with 4:18 left.

St. Francis countered with a 13-2 fourth-quarter run to pull ahead 52-31 and earn its ninth win of the season.

"When they switched to a man-to-man it flustered us, but I thought we did a nice job making the adjustments and regrouping," Healy said. "Once we got our confidence back we finished strong."

Healy was also impressed with the way his team limited the 6-foot-5 Matt Purdom.

"I thought we did a tremendous job on him," Healy said. "Our defense stepped it up and held him to under double digits. That was a big part of our success."

Brian McMahon finished with a game-high 15 points while Dan McCoy added 14 for St. Francis. Matt Purdom led Immaculate Conception with 9 points.

"This was a good loss because we learned a lot about ourselves," Howard said. "We learned how to play a strong man defense against a good team, and I thought this was one of our best defensive efforts this season."