Streamwood holds on against Bartlett
Led by Keenon Cole's 21 first-half points, Streamwood jumped out to a 42-24 halftime lead over Bartlett Wednesday night.
The Sabres then had to fight off a furious second half rally to win the Upstate Eight Conference contest in Streamwood, 73-66.
Spurred by the return of Austin Gates, who sat out a part of the second quarter in foul trouble, Bartlett whittled Streamwood's lead to 55-44 after the third quarter. Gates scored nine of his game-high 28 points in the period.
The Hawks also switched up their defense to neutralize Cole, who only made one three throw in the quarter.
"They went triangle and two. They did a nice job of taking (Cole) away," said Streamwood coach Kent Payne.
"I thought in the second half we did a really good job limiting the touches for Cole and (Nicola) Sinik, not giving them easy baskets and forcing the other guys to beat us," said Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith. "Then we turned that into our own scores."
Bartlett (6-20, 3-11) continued the rally and pulled within 68-62 with 50 seconds left to play. But that was a close as they would get.
"We got it down to six points and we had the ball," Wolfsmith said. "We took three 3s down the stretch and missed them instead of trying to go to the rim and get fouls so decision making kind of got us down the stretch but I never fault our guys for heart - they played their butts off."
"We made some good stops defensively late in the fourth quarter," Payne said. "And we hit a couple of key shots down the stretch."
After the Hawks jumped out to an early 3-0 lead Cole responded by connecting on three straight to give the Sabres their first lead of the night, 6-5. Bartlett retook the lead briefly on a Garrett Jurin (16 points) bucket, 7-6. Sinik (15 points) drained a 3 from the right wing to give the Sabres the lead for good. Streamwood. (9-15, 6-7) led 20-17 after the first eight minutes.
"A great start," Payne said. "Our pressure really created a tempo that we like and we kind of played off of that - some steals and rebounds - and we got out and ran."
Bartlett hit a scoring drought in the second stanza, only mustering 7 points, all by sophomore Clark Lewis, who finished the night with 14 points.
"I thought the second quarter, we let down attaching the rim. We missed a bunch of layups," said Wolfsmith. "When they got shot blockers like Cole and Sinik, that's going to happen but we got to attack the rim. That changed the tenor of the game."
Although Cole only scored six points in the last half of the game for a team-high 27-points, he made key defensive contributions. In addition to snaring 15 rebounds, the senior blocked three shots. Teammate Jacobe Strong scored 12 points.