Evanston accelerates past slow-starting Conant
Evanston sped past Conant 64-45 in a battle of top-rated teams Friday at the Joe Majkowski Thanksgiving Tournament hosted by St. Viator in Arlington Heights.
Evanston (3-0) scored the game's first 10 points, and Conant never could dig its way out as the Cougars fell to 2-1.
"We got down early," Conant coach Tom McCormack said. "We really thought our guys were focused and ready to play."
Evanston was really, really ready to play.
The Wildkits turned up the pressure early on Conant and never let up. Using their speed and athleticism, Evanston forced the Cougars away from the basket as Conant missed its first 7 shots and turned the ball over twice.
"We were very successful on defense," Evanston coach Mike Ellis said. "I thought our rotations were solid tonight."
Evanston used that defense to build a 20-3 lead with just over six minutes left in the first half. The even scarier part was that Evanston did it without Nojel Eastern playing his best. The Purdue-bound Eastern scored just 1 point until the final play of the first half.
Conant then began to adjust to the speed of the game. Led by Jimmy Sotos, the Cougars closed to 27-22 on a 3 by Sotos with 6:26 left in the third quarter.
After a defensive stop, Conant had a chance to pull within 3. But the Cougars missed, and Evanston went on a 15-6 run to close out the quarter with a revived Eastern leading the way.
"We won the second quarter," McCormack said. "We started to come back in the third. But what we can't do is give up points off of turnovers and offensive rebounds."
Conant had 12 turnovers compared with Evanston's 6 and the Wildcats had 16 offensive rebounds to the Cougars' 8.
"That was a huge difference," Ellis said. "That is 14 more possessions, and that turned into points."
McCormack agreed with the assessment.
"That's how they scored," McCormack said. "That was ultimately the difference in the game. But when we forced them to run an offense, we got things under control."
McCormack said playing a team like Evanston will pay huge dividends for Conant as the season progresses.
"This tournament is great for us," McCormack said. "I would much rather play in a game like this than a game that we can run away with."
Eastern and Joe Jones led Evanston with 15 points each.
Sotos led the Cougars with 24 points while Ben Schols had 9 points on a trio of 3s.
"They kind of punched us in the mouth to start," Sotos said. "We fought hard to get back into it. It is definitely good that we got a tough one to start. It is better for this to happen to us now than at the end of the season."